Karla's Surgery Details

(Seth blogging in behalf of Karla a.k.a. one-arm):

First of all, Karla was prescribed three drugs. Every single one warns that they can cause drowsiness. Needless to say, Karla's only been truly awake about 4 hours total since she went to sleep last night. She probably only slept 5 or 6 hours total. Most everything else has been like the night of the living dead. She moves slow, talks slow, nods off sitting up, slurs her speech, cries easily, and constantly wants hugs and kisses. I'm happy to oblige of course.

I've been getting a taste of what Karla goes through every day. Cooking, cleaning, shopping, dealing with Kids. I, once again, have a new-found respect for everything that any mother goes through on a daily basis. I say once again because this is the fourth surgery Karla's had in the past 2 years. Maybe this time I'll learn my lesson and Karla can quit having surgeries.

Also, I'll take the time here to say thank you to everyone who has helped out, and who will help out. Karla's mom watched the kids from 1pm to 630pm last night. Jan and Jen picked the kids up from Karla and took them home. They stayed with them until we got home at 940pm. Cora came to babysit Karla while I went shopping. Lots of people have called and some have stopped by, any many people have lined up to bring dinners. Thank you all from the bottom of our hearts.

Karla doesn't much like to accept help, but in her pre-operative blessing she was "commanded" to seek and accept any help given. She's plenty tough, deals with the pain quite well, and bounces back from surgeries fairly quickly. One of the best remedies for her is a phone call, or a visit. If you have the extra time I'd appreciate it if you called her (or stopped by), and let her know you're thinking of her. Now on to the boring details.

The surgery on the whole went very well. They did push back the surgery a little while, but we ended up getting to the hospital at 1:30. We then got all of the papers and blood samples out of the way, and sat in pre-op for about another hour and a half. Karla went back for surgery at 3:30. The surgery finished at 6:30 and Karla spent about half an hour waking up. Then they kept her around until about 9:00 to ensure that her pain was under control. After that we had to fill the prescriptions, and finally made it home.

The doctor had originally told her that it would be a laproscopic surgery, and that it should be relatively simple. He explained that one of the most common problems (and the problem he thought it was) was that the shoulder joint has a sort of an o-ring. Apparently this o-ring gets damaged from repeated dis-locations, and simply needs to be repaired. This sort of a surgery is performed laproscopically.

When he started the surgery he could see on the scope that the o-ring was completely intact, and therefore there was nothing to repair there. Using the scope he quickly found the source of the many dis-locations. The socket that receives the ball joint (at the top of the arm bone) had fractured some many many years ago. It had healed improperly making the socket slightly deformed and allowing the ball to slip out much more easily.

He made an upside down cup shape with his one hand and put fist of his other hand up into it saying that "the socket should look like this."

The he lifted his index and middle fingers slightly showing how "the socket had repaired itself improperly."
He said that with the socket expanded as it was the ball joint could come out much easier. He knew right then, after only a few minutes of surgery, that they wouldn't be able to repair it laproscopically.

He said that the way to repair this is to take some bone from another location in the shoulder and add it to the socket enclosing the ball joint better. He showed that they removed and re-attached a bone the size of the fingernail side of the thumb from the knuckle to the tip. He'd said two centimeters. They attached it to the socket (in the picture above onto facing side of the index finger) and thereby enclosed the ball joint much better.

He said it was very successful but that it would be very painful. Also, that the incision was small, and they didn't have to cut through any muscles. Even so, because they had cut bone and re-attached it it would still take six weeks to heal. Just as if she'd broken a bone. He told us that she would need to get up and walk around as much as she felt comfortable. Also that she should remove the sling and exercise her hand and elbow daily. He also said that she'd need to let her arm hang and rotate the shoulder joint in a circular motion. If she doesn't do the circular shoulder exercise specifically her shoulder will heal in such a way that she won't be able to raise her elbow above her shoulder.

He said that they had used a block in the shoulder, and that it would basically numb the whole arm for up to a day. Also, that once this block wore off she would be in severe pain. He prescribed percocet, fenegran, and valium. He told her to double up on the Percocet for the first day or two, and to use the valium for muscle spasms. The pain came just as they said that it would, and so did the muscle spasms.

That's all for now. I promised Karla before she had her surgery that I'd type for her when she wanted to blog. So until my next proxy-blog, take luck.