Recovery - Day 1

Here I am, home again. My hospital stay is all done with everything going quite smoothly this morning before being discharged. I now have a whole basket full of painkillers to keep me happy, plus a list of exercises to do and strict instructions to not train at all until Monday the 14th of December at the earliest.

Day 1 of recovery has been going fine. Pain levels are being nicely controlled by the medication. I had a few sore moments last night but they got quickly knocked down by some pretty serious pain killers. I expect I am up for a sore week ahead, but at least the last 24 hours haven't been too bad.

The one interesting bit of news this morning was that apparently once they got in there to fit the hook plate they found that the damage to my ligaments was much worse than they had expected from the X-rays. The ligaments in the AC joint were all completely torn, which they had not been expecting. I guess sometimes it is hard to know something unless you cut open your shoulder and look.

According to Dr Hewitt the surgeon, with the level of damage I had surgical repair really was the best (only) option. Whilst not great news, it was nice to have a bit of vindication for my decision to go in for the surgical repair option.

For anyone interested this is what my right shoulder now looks like.

As you can see it is a metal plate screwed to my collar bone. The plate then hooks under my shoulder blade holding everything in place while the ligaments get a chance to heal. Speaking of the ligaments, as I said, they were all torn, so Dr Hewitt took the opportunity to sew them back together. That level of repair would simply not have been possible without the surgery. From the outside it looks like a 5 or 6cm incision along the top of my shoulder. It will be interesting to see what it is like once it all healed up.

So that is pretty much me done for the day. I am still fairly fuzzy from the surgery and all the drugs, hopefully by tomorrow I will be starting to feel a bit clearer.

Unfortunately with no training for the next week and a bit, this blog could get a bit dull, although I will be doing be best to ensure that doesn't happen.

Speaking of future blogs, there may not be an entry tomorrow. We are taking this opportunity to take the family up to Moore River for the weekend. Moore River has many things, but one thing it doesn't have is easy access to the Interweb. Should be back online for Sunday though.