Surgery - Ugh!

When Ryan and I were dating he hurt his shoulder. We are not sure how he did it exactly, but he thinks it was his swimming class, his weight lifting class, or the combination of doing them in the same semester, one right after the other. He went to talk to a doctor about it right before he graduated and was given a series of physical therapy exercises to do. He did them somewhat faithfully up until we got married 6 weeks later. He acknowledged that they helped some, but he still couldn’t do his favorite exercises, so he gave up. That was over 6 years ago. Since then his arm gets sore from doing various swinging motions – throwing a ball, playing tennis, etc. He sometimes has a hard time sleeping on it as well, and he still can’t do the exercises he likes. We put a lot of money in our flexible spending account this year in anticipation that we may have a baby, but we haven’t. So we decided to have his shoulder looked at. He did some physical therapy again, but again, even though it improved slightly, he and the doctor concluded that the only way to really fix it would be surgery.
So, Ryan had shoulder surgery. It was a long ordeal, at least for me. We got there two hours before the surgery was scheduled – they took some blood, asked him a lot of questions, and prepped him for surgery. Then I just had to wait, and wait, and wait. After about an hour and half the doctor came and told me the surgery went well, and that he did have a labrum tear (so he wasn’t crazy) which they repaired. I was glad things went well. And then I waited for another couple hours until he started to wake up and they took him to recovery. But he had started waking up during the surgery so they gave him additional anesthesia, and then when he was waking up he was in pain so they gave him more stuff, so I waited another few hours before he was finally awake enough to get to the car.
Before the surgery he had been told he would be in a sling for three weeks. We weren’t anticipating it being a big deal, he even thought he would get back to work after a day or two. We were wrong. He doesn’t have just a sling, but a “pillow” to prop his arm up. For the first two days he had to take pain pills every 4 hours, even during the night. He also had this sophisticated ice pack called an “ice man” where you have this ice chest thing with a hose that pumps ice water into the pack. So he was attached to this thing for a few days, even while sleeping – good thing we have a king sized bed. He can’t really lie down very well because of his pillow. He was quite helpless at first, but has started to use his left hand to do some things. But still he requires a lot of taking care of – I tie his shoes, help him get dressed, do his hair. Between helping him with these things and having to getup in the night to get him his pills I feel I have had a little bit of preparation for a baby. Bring it on.

Ryan two days after surgery with his pillow and ice man - and after a shower.