said with a Sean Connery accent
Eleven days ago, I had surgery on my shoulder to repair the rotator cuff.
I was reluctant to send the query through ye olde Google before the surgery because then I would get completely grossed out and not want to go forward with it, so I thought it would be best to take a peek at the specifics after the fact.
I had a left shoulder arthroscopy, subacromial decompression, distal clavicle excision, biceps tenodesis, debridement surgery. (Yes, I cut and pasted that entirely from the patient portal. And I also Googled it.) I tried to read that to the tune of supercalifragilisticexpialidocious but I needed to do two and a quarter supercalifragilisticexpialidociouses to get the count right.
Shoulder surgery sucks. You don’t want to tell somebody exactly how much shoulder surgery sucks because then they won’t do it.
Or they’ll be scared to do it.
I was very afraid to do it. But it was necessary; my left arm had become a menace. I couldn’t raise my arm over my head, I had a lot of pain putting on a jacket or a backpack, and I couldn’t lift anything without significant discomfort. I cheered at the kids’ sportsball games like I was the C in YMCA. The MRI confirmed that every movement I made frayed my muscles (ew) a little bit more, so waiting seemed stupid.
Hence, the surgery!
Fanfare emojis. Other celebratory punctuation.
On the whole, diabetes was a blip before and during surgery. I had to fast from midnight on to 7 AM, which is when my surgery was scheduled for, but putting my pump into exercise mode kept my blood sugars from dipping too low. The surgical team told me I could eat glucose tabs if hypo, but that never happened. During surgery, the anesthesiologist both managed the anesthesia and also did finger sticks throughout the hour and a half operation, bless his heart1. I was able to keep my pump on during surgery and since I was lucid when I woke up, I took over diabetes management straight away.
The day of surgery was manageable, mostly because I had a nerve block so I couldn’t feel my arm at all. It was entirely numb, shoved into the immobilizing sling like a hotdog. Once the pins and needles feeling started to set in, I got weirdly excited.
“I can feel my fingers!” And then I would wiggle them.
And then my arm would hurt. And then I got less excited.
Diabetes was more of a problem the following days. Pain was significant. I was also taking an alternating regimen of acetaminophen and ibuprofen, as well as oxycodone during the first 48 hours post-surgery. (Strong pain meds freak me out, so I stopped taking those as soon as the pain approached tolerable.) But this shit was brutal. The zing of intensely sharp pain came like lightning strikes.
And my blood sugars reflected that pain. I struggled to keep my numbers out of the 200s for almost a week, and even running 200% basal rates didn’t do enough damage control. Only yesterday did things start to settle down, and now I can eat without stratospheric post-prandials.
Now, eleven days out, the pain is significantly less, which means I am instead grateful to be bored beyond belief. I am not able to work. I cannot do much in terms of housework. I spend way too much time scrolling on my phone right now, which means I am reading the news constantly. (A different kind of pain.) I’m writing this whole essay using voice-to-text which means that I’m going back occasionally to edit out the “get the fuck down from, Ruckus” interjections. (The cat is just all over the place right now. Me being housebound apparently gives her the zoomies.) Voice-to-text is an absolute technological marvel but for someone without a linear, streamlined thought process, it requires a lot of editorial oversight.
Friends have been generous with their recovery tips, so I wanted to share some of the items they suggested here in case you have an upcoming shoulder surgery in your world:
- Toothpaste dispenser – This is the greatest invention to ever have been invented. For someone like me, who lives to brush their teeth, this toothpaste dispenser makes one armed teeth brushing easy.
- Ice sling – (Thank you, Kate, for recommending this!) These ice shoulder packs were a godsend in those first few days.
- Silicone scrubber – The silicone scrubber made washing one hand at a time much easier. The hygiene gremlin in me is happy.
- Snap up shirt – I was convinced this would not be worth it, but for the first week this shirt was one of the only things I could put on and off without being a big baby.
- Non-slip mat – This gadget made it easier to open pill bottles, vitamins, and anything else one-handed. Independence!
- Can opener – Super useful if you’d like to make a lot of pasta e fagioli, or if you want to stay best friends with the cats by being able to open their cat food cans.
- Wedge pillow – After surgery, you apparently need to sleep partially sitting-up for several months, and this pillow was a much cheaper alternative than a recliner.
- Not a thing you can buy, but a recommendation – Hold the rubber ball that comes with your immobilizing sling in your hand while showering. It will instinctively keep you from using your injured arm. The ball that came with mine is bright red, so it looks like I am constantly on the hunt for a golden retriever to play with2.
- And one other recommendation – Thank your family in advance. And also during the duration of healing. Especially if you have to ask them to shave your armpits for you. Hypothetically.
Now I will spend the next few months marveling at how I met my 2026 medical deductible within the first two weeks of the year, carefully rehabbing this shoulder, and trying to tame my stream of consciousness so that I can write using voice to text without losing the literal plot holy shit Ruckus get down from there exclamation point
