Jessica's Shoulders

So I started to realize that my blog was available for anyone to see. Do a google search on Patty Deters and it takes you to my blog. I didn't like that so I changed the privacy settings to only those who I invite and then got out of the habit of blogging. So let's see what I can do to catch up. Jessica was content to wait until she could "kick" in enough swim meets that she could get her "letter." Well she was in so much pain, and the new coach agreed to let her letter without kicking, we moved forward with the surgery plans. Surgery #1 on the right shoulder was scheduled for Monday, November 21, 2011. This was scheduled during a whole week off of school. Because of budget cuts this was the first year we had the entire week of Thanksgiving off.

I was very nervous going into this surgery, just totally not knowing what to expect. Dave came and met me at the surgery center and we prayed a lot for Jessica. The surgery took about 2 hours, maybe more. We met with the surgeon afterwards an he said that the rotator cuff tear was so small that he merely cleaned it up. The bigger problem was how "loose" her shoulders were. Normally when he would put a scope in, it would go up and over the shoulder. With hers he said we have a term called "the drive through." The scope could go right through her shoulders. When she was asleep, he could easily dislocate her shoulders up and down and side to side. Most likely she was partially dislocating her shoulder with every stroke of swimming and with every time she tried to raise her hand in class.

He tightened her shoulder all the way around and said, she probably won't like me much when she wakes up. On I went to the recovery room. She was groggy and slow to wake up. At one point she said, I wonder when they will put the sling on me. Well turns out it was already on her. She had a nerve block in her neck that was totally numbing her right side. She couldn't feel anything nor could she move her fingers. The block was supposed to last two days (but it lasted four which was nice.) The surgery was a great success.

We had physical therapy appointments twice a week up until the next surgery which was Feb 1.