I’m six weeks out from shoulder surgery and I’ve graduated from passive range of motion (PROM) to active range of motion (AROM). PROM was effective but frustrating as it seems to be designed to keep my bicep attachment from ripping (BARF), so I had to keep it pretty darn stationary for the first four weeks, only allowing for PROM.
PROM is not fun. Unlike the prom, I could not raise my arms in the air and dance away my cares. Instead, I could lean and let my arm dangle below me, moving my body around so that the arm would pendulum back and forth and around in maddeningly slow circles.
I looked like a busted marionette puppet. Or a depressed windmill.
And I was both!
But now — hashtag blessed now — I am able to actively move my arm. AROM time. I can’t lift anything heavier than a pound, so I’m limited to my phone or a regular sized coffee cup and I have been caught bicep-curling a banana (then eating it, like the fruit conquistador I am). No more sling. I can drive! I don’t cry in the shower anymore. I am halfway through physical therapy rehab. I ditched the inclined plane pillow and have returned to a soft, pillowy rectangle once more.
It’s thrilling to leave that red ball-for-dogs behind and embrace life, albeit carefully and one banana-weighted moment at a time. There’s a very snazzy over-the-door pulley system that I use several times a day to coax my arm into a state of elevation. There are days when I pretend my left hand is Thing and it crawls up the wall. Sometimes I used a broom handle and raise it over my arms as if I’m threatening the sky like the old man from the Simpsons but noooooo it’s part of the rehab!
Physical therapy is weird shit.
Once the acute pain phase was over, everything was top-tier boring. And then a blizzard dumped three feet of snow (not hyperbole — a real, deal yardstick of snow) onto our state and the week of February school vacation yawned into two full weeks, complete with giant piles of snow that will melt and flood the lawn and we’ll end with with ducks paddling4 around out there.
But at least I wrote this without using any voice-to-text software!
Progress.
This morning, I had my six week post-surgical follow-up and was cleared for a mostly normal existence. Which is good timing because in a fit of what-am-I-doing-with-my-life, I signed up for oil pastel lessons, toggled between work calls and writing. I have absolutely no experience with oil pastels outside of the knowledge that they look like little, wet crayons and you can smudge the ever-loving fuck out of them. The instructor asked me what kind of still life, or landscape, I was interested in creating.
“I’m looking to draw fruit. I was hoping to start with a lemon,” I said.
“Oh, lovely! What kind of lemon?”
She sounded so hopeful. I almost felt bad for her.
“An evil lemon. Like with bushy eyebrows and jagged teeth.” I’d been thinking about a short story about an evil lemon; his citrus hiss haunts my days. “Other things, too, but I’d love some instruction on adding faces to basically everything.”
There was a long pause.
“Well that sounds delightful.”
Hell yeah. Here’s to arming myself with a new skill.
