The past few days have been all about expectation management.
Doc pre-surgery: “your collarbone might heal fine without surgery. With surgery you will have good range of motion after the pain recedes in about 3 days”
Doc post-surgery: “you will be in a sling for 6 weeks. Don’t even think about physical therapy until the stiches come out”
Needless to say, there were some complications in the surgery. Namely, a couple of muscles were torn from the collarbone. I didn’t get both of their names, but one was a deltoid. In addition to the muscle tears, the collarbone was in 7 pieces (only 4 were observed in the xray). 1 plate, 11 screws and 5+ hours later everything was back where it belonged. The next 24 hours were a blur of pain. Much of my memory of it is altered, but I do know that Lynda was there to help me through those dark hours. It’s the “down” times when the depth of friendships are revealed.
For now the dominant theme is pain management, but sooner or later that is going to give way to the road to recovery. I’m a rapid healer in general; this time around I’m focusing more energy on the healing and have an outstanding team of docs and pt’s to guide such efforts. The surgeon also finagled a bone stimulator that is supposed to drastically cut down the healing time (for the bone, anyway).
Current topic of research is recumbents. A recumbent with one of my PT wheels set up on a trainer would be da bomb…anyone have one they could spare for a few months?