Half a lazy-boy

The follow up visit has passed, the MRI read, the surgery scheduled. My rotator cuff is fine, and much as the orthodoc surmised, it is indeed my cartilage. I have torn cartilage, part of which is occasionally catching in my joint. This is sort of reassuring as when I did the injury I kept insisting for days it felt like there was a rock in my joint I couldn't move around, like sticking a crayon in the open hinge-crack of a door.

Surgery means no serving for 2 to four months, depending on how long it takes to heal, but hopefully I'll at least get to work as a host not too long after the surgery, just long enough for stiches to come out and such. One other trick to this is I don't know which surgery of two I'll actually be getting, as the call on that will be made once they get in there and see, a time when I'll not be awake to give much input.

If the torn pieces are not too damaged, the tissue around it ok (which I'm worried about as I worked with it for over a month before going to the doc) then they will try and piece the cartilage back together. This is the prefered method, but has a drawback. If they are wrong, then there is a second surgery later on to try and fix that error. Method number two is getting in there, seeing a cluster of damage, and simply cleaning out all the cartilage. There is no replacement. I would simply not have that cartilage anymore. I am told this would result in some lifetime lack of stability in the shoulder. It wasn't till later, after the shock wore off that I began to wonder, what is a 'lack of stability?'

I can see if lack of stability is problematic enough, it may preclude my ever safely wanting to serve again, as the job is hard on that shoulder and would place it at higher risk of future damage.

My surgery is scheduled for about a week and a half away, but they already have me in a sling. This is primarily to get me used to dealing with it, particularly sleeping in it.

Last night was rough. It isn't what I think of as a standard sling. It's a sling, but between it and my body is a curved pillow the size of a couch armrest that positions the arm out from my body. The arm points forward as opposed to across my front. This completely rules out trying to sleep on my left. On my back works ok. But on my right side, this puts my arm elevated up on the cushion, instead of flat on my side, meaning gravity tries to slide my arm up into my shoulder, the same motion as a one sided extended shrug. Sleeping on my tummy was already pretty much out as I cannot raise my arm, but I had worked out a method. I slid the mattress a few inches over, so I could drop the arm onto the boxspring. This Macgyvered nighttime armrest had worked pretty well to allow me to sleep some on my tummy, but not with this piece of a lazy-boy strapped to me.

Add to this that one strap chafes my neck, and the other (around my waist) feels like its bruising my ribs [a la the princess and the pea] I'm surpremely unhappy with the thing. And this doesn't yet include the pain of surgery recovery. I'm beginning to think I spoke to early when I thought boredom was going to be my worst problem. I'm ever the optimist.

And it looks, well, dorky. [--Man I had to run back to grade school real quick to get that description.]
I did my model pose with it on for my boyfriend.
"Can you think of a way I could possibly look more ridiculous than with this couch cushion strapped to me?" I shriek.

"Yes," He calmly says. "You could have two."

I guess he's the optimist.