Darren's surgery

Darren had surgery on the 23rd of April and the surgery went well - ok so it depends on how you look at it. We thought that his right shoulder would be better off then his left shoulder was... we were wrong, it was worse! so while the surgery went well and was a success, the findings we not so good. They did a full rotator cuff repair, took off some of his bone to eliminate the rubbing, subcronial decompression, and best of all he ripped his biceps tendon clean off so the had to screw that one back in to the bone... 5 hours later we were on our way home! He is doing much better this time after surgery, they gave him a nerve block so the pain wasn't too bad the first 24 hours. However the nurse told me not to start the pain meds till the block wore off... pain hit and it was huge and hard! I called the doctor as the meds weren't touching the pain and he said we should have started the meds as soon as we got home. So basically we are a full day behind schedule... it took us 2 days to get it under control and he was in so much pain those 2 days. I felt so helpless just having to watch him hurt like that.
Now it is a 6 week recovery in a sling, and 16 weeks of therapy. He will go once a week and cannot start to strength train until the end of June... that is killing him. He is a lousey patient - I have told him that - he doesn't keep his arm in the sling, and does far more then he should. But it's his pain and his road back so I back off.
It took me a week but he finally allowed pictures :)


About the happiest he looked in the first week

Front view, the one closest to his arm pit is about 1-1/2" long where they went in to screw teh tendon back on

The fun briusing

All his openings - it's amazing what they can do orthoscopically.