Surgery Update: Week 10

Hey Guys! I wanted to check back in with you guys on my shoulder surgery. I usually do WIAW on Wednesdays, but today I totally forgot to take pictures of everything! So, I figured this would do for the day!

I went back to work about a month ago. It has been going pretty well. Some days are harder than others. I definitely have my struggles, but I do make it work. I have not used my arm there, just like I was told.

As far as therapy, after my appointment that I told you about previously, I got a call from my therapist and he told me that the doctor said I couldn't do therapy until 4 weeks later. So, I went to my therapy again starting on March 12th. It was HORRIBLE. Seriously I was in so much pain.

I went to my next appointment yesterday. It was much better than the previous one. I have gotten a lot more movement back. I am so excited. I am still having a lot of pain. Especially after therapy. I am getting a lot of muscle spasms in the back of my arm. Like I said, I am getting more movement, but I am having a hard time holding a lot of weight.

I go to my next appointment Friday. Then next Wednesday I have another therapy appointment and a doctor appointment. I am really hoping that they will tell me I don't have to wear the sling anymore. My plan is to update you again either next week or the week after.

Thanks for checking in with my Guys! I will keep you up to date!

Shoulder Surgery Update:Week 3

Hey Guys! I really intended to keep you all way more up to date with my surgery, but life has been crazy! If you aren't aware of what I'm talking about, you can read my first post about my surgery here.

 

I had my surgery on the 7th of January. On the sixth I had to pack up all of Matthew's bags because he was going away for the entire week. He got was leaving Monday before I went to work and wouldn't be back until Sunday evening. He was also bouncing around to 3 different homes (my mom's, my brother's, and his daddy's) during that week, so I had to make sure everything was packed in separate bags.

 

On the 7th we woke up to go to the hospital and I was really in a panic. I did not want to go, I begged Jason not make me go. It was very stressful. When we got there we had to go in and pay for the surgery and then we waited for a little bit. When they took me back, they got me change into a gown and were looking at my shoulder and noticed I had a few little spots on it. They weren't sure if the doctor would continue to do the surgery. So we had to wait on the doctor to move any further, but he finally came out and gave us the OK. After that they did my IV, got me pretty drugged up, numbed my entire arm and I don't remember anything else until I woke up.

 

It was really rough afterward. I was told I had to sleep sitting up which I was aware of, but is way more difficult in theory than it even sounds in your head. The whole first day my arm was entirely numb and I had no use of my hand or anything. The whole first week I was home alone for the most part (JP and my mom were there the day I had surgery and JP took off Wednesday) and on a lot of pain medication.

 

The second week was even harder than the first. I was coming off of pain medication which was putting me in a very bad place. I was really sick, had a horrible headache, was still in a lot of pain and taking care of Matthew by myself everyday.

The sling is probably the most annoying thing ever! It straps on to my arm, there's a pad between my arm and my body, and it straps around my waist. And I never get out of it. I'm supposed to wear it 24 hours a day 7 days a week. Though I may not be so good about wearing it all the time. I do wear it if I'm up and around and I always wear it if I'm sleeping, but sometimes I take it off if I'm just sitting on the couch watching YouTube.

 

I have been going pretty stir crazy. I mostly only see the boys. I'm not allowed to drive so I can only get out of the house if JP is home. Which usually means our weekends are jam packed because I want to stay out of house as much as possible. I'm basically stuck in the corner of our sectional all the time. I joke around and tell JP that there's going to permanently be a Casey ass print on our couch.

 

I also have felt like I am putting a lot of extra stress on JP because I couldn't do anything by myself. I couldn't get dressed, I couldn't take a shower, I couldn't fix Matthews food, and I could barely eat on my own. So I felt really bad because I felt like I wasn't doing enough to help him, even though I knew that I couldn't physically do any of it. That's still a feeling that I'm struggling with, but I am getting to the point where I'm more capable to do things on my own. At this point I am taking showers mostly by myself, he just sits in the room with me in case I need him. I can dress myself for the most part, though I try not to do it by myself the whole time every time just because I don't want to risk hurting myself. I have even done the laundry and the dishes a few times.

 

 

I am starting to recover which is a good thing. I start physical therapy next week. All the bandages are off and I am down to wearing just Band Aids as of now. I have had a doctors appointment where he basically just explained the surgery to me. (I am trying to keep most of the actual medical things out of here just because it is really personal to me.)

 

 

I am surprisingly ready to go back to work and feel productive once again. We have gotten a lot done in the few weeks that I've been off, because we've packed the weekends so much. Matthew and I are officially totally moved into the house and we've been working on some projects that are really important to us.

 

So that's my update on how I'm doing. I am really sorry that I haven't updated as much as I intended to. JP did film some vlogs from the day I had surgery, but he accidentally ran over his phone and so those videos are lost. Typing has been really difficult for me, so even editing posts has been hard, which is also why I just haven't blogged very much in general. I am working on it and hoping that I'm going to get better at it.

 

Thank you guys so much for your support and understanding during this hard time. I have a few more posts coming this week and I'm hoping that they're all going to be on time. I will update you again when I start physical therapy next week just to let you know how that's going.

Shoulder injury update

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.