Tips from the Trenches: Shoulder Surgery

                                                                          Barbara Muehrcke Allen

You might call this "Preserving Your Independence While Getting Your Shoulder Back." If you have someone at home to help you, that's great, but if you live alone these tips can really help.

My shoulder surgery involved an acromial bone spur impinging on the rotator cuff, not a rotator cuff tear, thank goodness! But if I had let it go much longer, a tear probably would have happened.

So, an ounce of prevention.  If you've been getting multiple cortisone shots a year for several years to alleviate shoulder pain and the problem turns out to be a bone spur, consider surgery sooner rather than later.

No hospital bed for you. You're in and out in one day with a giant sling including a mattress-like pad for your arm.

What happens next?

As early as the following day you will start physical therapy, but it's not bad because you will likely have a pain pump attached to your upper arm, with a thin, wiry tube feeding a very strong pain killer directly to the place that hurts the most. This great painkiller lasts up to 48 hours so for that time you feel pretty good. You or your surgeon can take this out at your first follow-up appointment, probably in a few days.

Then, back home and rest for about 48 hours with lots of pillows in bed or in a recliner, if you have one.

Speaking of pain, for my surgery it felt and still feels like a dull ache, sort of a toothache of the arm, yes arm.  The ache does radiate right down to your fingers. But little by little, as you regain better range of motion, it begins to fade.

What to have at home

-- Prunes.  The pain medications you are given are strong ones, often including Oxycontin or the generic Oxycodone, and Percocet or Darvocet for a few days, and they make you wish you had prunes, lots of prunes.

-- Hot pad and cold pad, hot to use before your exercises and cold to use after.  The hot pad can be one of these blue liquid-filled pads that you can put in the freezer or the microwave. The cold pad can be a bag of frozen peas, or one of those long cloth sacks with beans inside.  I kept that one in the freezer.

-- Small portions of frozen meals that you can just pop in the microwave.

How to Do What You Have to Do

-- Getting dressed. Forget the bra for probably 12 to 14 days. Not so bad if you're still a 34A but not so good if you're a 40 D. My left arm was a long way from meeting my right arm in back, and it hurt too much to hook it in front and try to wrestle it around and up. I had three loose flannel shirts (men's shirts are good) and just rotated them.

-- Unrolling the toilet paper. Let's say it's on your left and that's the shoulder that had surgery.  Just lean that elbow against the roll to keep it from unrolling all over the floor and pull the paper with your right hand, giving it a quick twist at the end.

-- Throwing out trash in the dumpster, if you're an apartment dweller.  If it's a big, high one, this is one of the places where friends come in. Call it a "going away present" when they visit. You probably won't be raising your arm above shoulder level while lifting weight for some time.

-- Getting to all those PT appointments. Here's the other big place where friends come in. Frankly, this dependency really bothered me so, after four trips by two friends, and many more to go, six to eight weeks, more if you have a rotator cuff tear, I chose not to take my recommended stronger pain medication before PT, because then I wasn't supposed to drive.  Instead I waited until I got home. That way I could drive myself. By my second week of PT I was driving everywhere.

-- Exercising at home. It's a pain but the more compliant you are in doing the exercises, which increase appointment by appointment, the sooner you will have full range of motion and a back- to- normal life.

It is now 11 weeks after surgery.  Physical therapy lasted for about eight weeks.  The dull arm ache is still there but to a much lesser degree.  My orthopedic surgeon tells me that it can take up to six months until it is just about or completely gone.

It's six months now since my shoulder surgery. As of a month ago I was still having some pain with some arm movements, particularly moving it out to the side and back, as if putting on my coat, lifting it up and over to the other side of the back of my head, and hooking my bra.

Ta-dah! Thank goodness for water toning/strengthening, whatever.

I started in a class with about 25 other old ladies at the Y and within a month, the arm movement exercises, particularly under water, made the last difference. I went twice a week for an hour of aerobic and strengthening sessions. I can do all those things without pain now.

I strongly recommend the water exercises, especially in a class where you have to keep up, as the finishing touch.

So, here's to me and to you. As I said in my comments about knee replacement surgery, if you think you will need this surgery in a year or so, and if the rest of you feels pretty good right now, go for it! I wish you well