In Mom's honor

I have decided to become the official martyr of the family. I had my shoulder operated on Tuesday and yes, the doctor officially declared my shoulder as being that of a 65 to 70 year old man. I don't know the medical terminology but basically I had a birth defect in my clavicle that involved a piece of bone that was hook shaped at the end and pointed downward. Every time I moved my arm, the bone would bang against the top of my shoulder until it eventually tore a large hole across the top of my rotator cuff. I had a secondary tear inside the cuff and the tendon at the top of my massive bicep muscle was shredded to the point that it resembled the frayed end of a rope. They attempted to do an inter scapula block which basically numbs the area they are going to operated on which greatly reduces pain and the need for pain medication. This is done by inserting a needle about 1 inch deep into the neck and attaching electrodes which they then use to manipulate the muscles to the area of the surgery. When they get the right spot, they inject the drugs to block the nerves. Due to my history I opted to do the procedure even though you are fully awake at the time. It wasn't as bad as I had feared and would recommend that if you are going to have surgery you opt to have this done. Unfortunately in my case it did not work. Instead of it numbing my shoulder, it numbed the back of my head. They then needed to have the anesthesiologist start my I.V. line because my veins are so bad they couldn't find one.
As it was he had to find a vein(even examining my legs for a site) and had to stick me twice using lidocaine to numb the area because he had to go so deep.
Now on to the surgery. The damage was so severe that when they inserted the scope it became immediately apparent that the repair was not able to be done laproscopically. So they made a 4 inch incision running from the back of my shoulder over the top to the front. They made a second 4 inch incision from the top of my shoulder down my bicep. That's a total of 8 inches plus a hole for the scope. The benefit of the open incision is that they were able to do a much more thorough job. It was supposed to be about a 1 hour procedure but it turned out the be three hours. Now it's on to physical therapy. So what's new with everyone else?