PART 4: SURGERY PREP

Now that surgery is scheduled I realized I had a lot of prep to do beforehand.  I needed to wrap things up at work since I didn't know how long I'd be off, get stuff ready around the house for dealing with one arm in a brace, and then what caught me the most by surprise was the mental preparation I needed to do.

Since the ortho put me in a sling to wear before surgery, I was challenged to get work wrapped up so I could go on disability for as long as my recovery needed.  This required me to quickly come up with and execute a plan for all of my responsibilities and projects and then take the time to communicate and delegate these plans to staff, managers, and clients.  It would have been hard enough to do this before surgery while healthy, let alone with only one hand to type with and pain to manage.

Outside of work, I really didn't know what to expect during surgery, recovery, or physical therapy.  Since this injury is pretty rare there were only a handful of resources I found online that allowed me to understand what to expect.  This is when I got the idea to start this blog so that others can learn from my experience.

Around the house my wife and I had to setup a place for me to sleep since it's best to sleep in a slightly reclined position with a shoulder immobilizer on.  We ended up with a fluffy chair with lots of pillows in front of the tv as well as getting a wedge pillow for the bed.  The other main items we needed were comfy loose fitting clothes that would be easy to get on and off with my arm in a brace.

The last part for me was getting mentally ready for surgery and therapy.  This required me to do some reading on what to expect in the procedure but more importantly coming to peace with the decisions and put my faith in the hands of the care I was receiving.  Since my pain and bruise kept getting worse leading up to surgery, this actually became easier to accept over the weekend.