I just found out that I have to have surgery on January 7th for my shoulder so I guess I'll give you a little bit of a backstory on this.
Back in October I actually woke up in the middle of the night with my arm bent back behind me and I was screaming in pain. I refused to let JP has to take me to the ER in the middle of the night because I didn't want him to miss work. The next day I was in so much pain that he left work halfway through the day and took me to the ER anyway. At the ER they did an x-ray on my arm and ended up telling me that I had sprained my shoulder and it to wait about 3 weeks and if it wasn't better to either come back to the ER or go to my general practitioner. I didn't feel totally better at 3 weeks but I also didn't feel like I was in enough pain to afford paying for another ER visit or a visit to my doctor so I ended up putting it off which was probably a bad idea.
Probably 4 weeks to 5 weeks after I originally injured my shoulder I was in the shower and I reached for my face wash that was on the top part of the shower and dislocated my shoulder again, which I have done a few times in between but not a severely as this time. This time JP had to come into the bathroom and turn the water off and pull me out. When he pulled me out of the shower my arm relocated which was extremely painful. We went back to the ER the next day and the doctor at the ER this time was like this if its dislocating it is absolutely not a sprain. He recommended another xray just to make sure that I hadn't broken anything during this this dislocation. The xray came back clear but he said to go to my orthopedic. He understood the mass amount of pain I was in obviously because he wrote me a prescription for 600 milligram ibuprofen, for lortab, and for a shot of pain meds as well.
I waited probably a week to call my doctor just because I was kind of hoping that it would get better in time and it didn't so I called my orthopedic. When I went in, he immediately said well we're going to schedule you for an MRI because what I believe is wrong you can only see on an MRI. So a couple days later they called me and scheduled my MRI which was just this past Monday. I hate MRI's by the way so I was kind of panicked about going. But the guy was super nice and we had no problems. I didn't freak out I got the MRI with all the scans looking clear and I had my follow up appointment with the orthopedic Wednesday.
Wednesday I went into the orthopedics office and he walks in and says "Well you definitely dislocated your shoulder, not that I thought you didn't know that." Then he followed up with "Typically when somebody dislocates their shoulder they stretch out or tear ligaments on the bottom part of the joint, but you have torn ligaments all around the entire joint and to quote the MRI report you have extensively torn ligaments all around your joint. So this means surgery."
I am really scared about having surgery (not that I think everybody who has to have surgery isn't scared) because I can imagine it is going to be super hard to take care of myself with one arm, but I also have to take care of a 4-year-old as well. So I'm a little concerned about that but I do have lots of help. My brother happens to be home from Iowa during the time that I'm having surgery so he's going to watch Matthew for the first couple of days for us, so that when I'm home during the day I don't have to worry about taking care of him just for the first few days.
The surgery is scheduled for January 7th. I don't know a time yet or anything like that. I do know that I'll be out of work for 4 to 6 weeks. It's just not exciting because of the money issues of course. I'm already in the process of filing for my leave of absence from work and my short term disability from work which will help me financially. The money as far as cost for the surgery is a little frightening for me as well because it's a really large amount. Way more than I was expecting and the majority of it has to be paid before I can have the surgery so we are in a little bit of a rush to find a big chunk of cash basically.
I just wanted to let you all know why I have been slightly MIA lately. I will continue to blog through the whole recovery. I will keep you up to date on my plans and my recovery.
Back in October I actually woke up in the middle of the night with my arm bent back behind me and I was screaming in pain. I refused to let JP has to take me to the ER in the middle of the night because I didn't want him to miss work. The next day I was in so much pain that he left work halfway through the day and took me to the ER anyway. At the ER they did an x-ray on my arm and ended up telling me that I had sprained my shoulder and it to wait about 3 weeks and if it wasn't better to either come back to the ER or go to my general practitioner. I didn't feel totally better at 3 weeks but I also didn't feel like I was in enough pain to afford paying for another ER visit or a visit to my doctor so I ended up putting it off which was probably a bad idea.
Probably 4 weeks to 5 weeks after I originally injured my shoulder I was in the shower and I reached for my face wash that was on the top part of the shower and dislocated my shoulder again, which I have done a few times in between but not a severely as this time. This time JP had to come into the bathroom and turn the water off and pull me out. When he pulled me out of the shower my arm relocated which was extremely painful. We went back to the ER the next day and the doctor at the ER this time was like this if its dislocating it is absolutely not a sprain. He recommended another xray just to make sure that I hadn't broken anything during this this dislocation. The xray came back clear but he said to go to my orthopedic. He understood the mass amount of pain I was in obviously because he wrote me a prescription for 600 milligram ibuprofen, for lortab, and for a shot of pain meds as well.
I waited probably a week to call my doctor just because I was kind of hoping that it would get better in time and it didn't so I called my orthopedic. When I went in, he immediately said well we're going to schedule you for an MRI because what I believe is wrong you can only see on an MRI. So a couple days later they called me and scheduled my MRI which was just this past Monday. I hate MRI's by the way so I was kind of panicked about going. But the guy was super nice and we had no problems. I didn't freak out I got the MRI with all the scans looking clear and I had my follow up appointment with the orthopedic Wednesday.
Wednesday I went into the orthopedics office and he walks in and says "Well you definitely dislocated your shoulder, not that I thought you didn't know that." Then he followed up with "Typically when somebody dislocates their shoulder they stretch out or tear ligaments on the bottom part of the joint, but you have torn ligaments all around the entire joint and to quote the MRI report you have extensively torn ligaments all around your joint. So this means surgery."
I am really scared about having surgery (not that I think everybody who has to have surgery isn't scared) because I can imagine it is going to be super hard to take care of myself with one arm, but I also have to take care of a 4-year-old as well. So I'm a little concerned about that but I do have lots of help. My brother happens to be home from Iowa during the time that I'm having surgery so he's going to watch Matthew for the first couple of days for us, so that when I'm home during the day I don't have to worry about taking care of him just for the first few days.
The surgery is scheduled for January 7th. I don't know a time yet or anything like that. I do know that I'll be out of work for 4 to 6 weeks. It's just not exciting because of the money issues of course. I'm already in the process of filing for my leave of absence from work and my short term disability from work which will help me financially. The money as far as cost for the surgery is a little frightening for me as well because it's a really large amount. Way more than I was expecting and the majority of it has to be paid before I can have the surgery so we are in a little bit of a rush to find a big chunk of cash basically.
I just wanted to let you all know why I have been slightly MIA lately. I will continue to blog through the whole recovery. I will keep you up to date on my plans and my recovery.
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