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Surgery update

An update for the many people who have cared for me and my family and provided us with all sorts of love recently:

I had right-shoulder surgery on Friday morning, and everything seemed to go very well. As was the case a year ago (left shoulder surgery), the staff of UK HealthCare were absolute rock stars, and took great great care of me.

It was a long weekend, but Monday, I got to take a shower. EVERYBODY is glad about that. Lucy helped peel off the world’s biggest bandage and yowee, that felt the way you would expect peeling off the world’s biggest bandage would feel. <ow, ow, ow!>

Yesterday, my ever-reliable beloved friend Robert King took me to my much-anticipated post op follow-up, and the crew at UK Sports Medicine – Turfland – said everything looked just as great as it could possibly look. My incredible surgeon, Dr. Greg Mair, fixed the two rotator cuff tears, as well as repairing a long-standing bicep tear and addressed some arthritis while they were “in there.” So that was really wonderful to hear. (Side note: this is arthroscopic surgery, if you didn’t know, and it’s insane—done mostly like a video game through tiny incisions with tiny cameras and tiny tools. Hooray for modern medicine)

Now I just have to be in the 24/7 Ultra-Sling III® for at least another month—which is exhausting and regularly frustrating, can’t lie—but I’ll take it! Because once I’m nominally out of the sling, I can start the rehab road to rebuilding strength and, in a few months, having a shoulder that is better than it was in the first place. (Side musing: a lot of people suppose that rehab/PT is where the real struggle [pain] starts, but I don’t feel that way. Because when I get to PT, that’s when I *get to work* and get to experience a real sense of PROGRESS. I cannot WAIT to get started! But right now my job is precisely: to *wait* while the surgery trauma heals—for a month at least.

I feel like dead weight around the house, and am beyond grateful to Lucy for all the TLC and for keeping this family afloat while I grow moss on my backside. Those feelings are hard. I don’t like to be helped. I vastly prefer to do

The helping. But I know there aren’t any shortcuts in this recuperation, and that the best thing I can do for my family is to make a full recovery by following doctor’s orders.

I want to profusely thank the wonderful people who have provided us with food. Words cannot adequately express our gratitude. THANK YOU to Jenn Lee McCaffrey for rebooting our Mealtrain (from a year ago, inconceivable, the need to do that). If you have a whisk that’s wanting to whisk, we’ll just say a humble and heartfelt “thank you.” HTTPS://Mealtrain.com/8ykyk8

I’m including some images of the food that’s kept us so well fed. (With an extra shout out to Wyn and Vicki Sword, who funded a feast from Malone’s that we inhaled before remembering to take a picture)

Much love to all, and I look forward to being able to one day repay the kindness we’ve been shown through this challenge.