Words of Danny O'Bigbelly My idea of a good time

I recently had shoulder surgery, and found the experience and its effects quite a bit different than I’d expected.  I’ve therefore decided to share my thoughts about these experiences and provide advice to anyone facing a similar procedure.  Unlike my usual blog postings, which are generally intended (with varying results) to amuse, this posting is intended to be informative, and perhaps even didactic.  I’m going to tell you the things I wish I’d known ahead of time, along with a few things I knew but didn’t really take to heart.  It might not be humorous, but it might be useful.

I must begin with an important list of caveats: there are many reasons to have shoulder surgery; there are many different procedures that your surgeon might choose to perform; and there are many possible outcomes and followup treatments.  I am in no position to offer any medical advice about what might be best for you.  If my advice differs from that of your surgeon, physician, physical therapist, or other medical professional, you should probably take their advice — they’ve probably done this dozens or hundreds of times, and I’m in the middle of doing it for my first time.  Similarly, if your experiences differ from mine, the differences are most likely to be explained by the differences in procedures and ordinary variability in outcomes, and you shouldn’t interpret it to mean that something went wrong with your surgery.  Your mileage may vary, as they say.

If you think there’s anything missing or incorrect about my advice, please let me know!  You can email me at dannyo@public-spectacle.com.  (You can also leave a comment below, but with all the procedures I need to use to keep the spammers from overrunning this site, it’s a bit cumbersome for non-spammers to register and leave comments…)

You can’t do this alone

The most important thing you can do to prepare for shoulder surgery is find someone, or a rotating team of people, to take care of you for at least a few days, if not longer.  You will be quite helpless for a few days after the surgery, and somewhat helpless for perhaps several additional weeks.  You will need someone to help with all sorts of things — things that require using two hands, or flexing your shoulders in certain ways.  The list of such things is much longer than most people will guess.  You don’t require 24/7 attention, but there are simple things that you will not be able to do for yourself, at least not in the usual way.

• Dressing/undressing yourself.  See notes below about clothing.
• Cooking/cleaning up after meals.
• Shaving, bathing (particularly toweling off afterward).
• Laundry.
• Driving.

You’ll be surprised, amazed, and dismayed at how many activities you think of as requiring one hand actually require two.  That other hand might be doing something simple — like holding something you’re trying to cut — but essential.

If you live in an area that gets snow, you’re going to have to find someone to shovel the snow for you — hire someone, if necessary.  It would not be wise to attempt any shoveling or attempting to wrestle with a  snowblower any time soon.

Even if you’re a total masochist, and hate to rely on anyone, there’s no way you’re going to get the bandages off by yourself.

Don’t (always) think for yourself

In addition to the errands your helper(s) will going to run for you (picking up prescriptions and groceries, etc), you also might need someone to help you think and remember things.  When you get out of your surgery, the surgeon will probably tell you all sorts of interesting and useful things about how it went and what to expect, not properly taking into account that you’re still dopey from all the anesthetic and won’t remember more than 10% of the conversation in an hour.  Then he or she will schedule a follow-up appointment or two with you, and give you an appointment card, which within two hours you will forget ever existed.  You need someone whose brain is fully functional to make note of any special instructions that the surgeon gives you, and makes sure that followup appointments get on your calendar, etc.  You’re asking for trouble if you expect to have your wits about you until the fog of anesthesia has completely lifted…  and after it does, you might be sleep-deprived for a while, which isn’t much better.  It’s a good idea to have a brain-buddy to keep track of things.  It’s a good idea to have someone go to the follow up appointments with you and take notes.

I’m going to repeat that for good measure — you are going to be sleep-deprived.  You will forget things, and you may make bad decisions.  Another person can help.

Networking

I didn’t tell a lot of people about my surgery ahead of time, and before I had shoulder surgery, I didn’t know many people who had had a similar procedure.  After I had the surgery, and it became impossible to hide that I’d had the surgery done, it seemed like people who had advice about shoulder surgery, either first-hand or from someone close to them, were everywhere.

If you tell people that you’re going to get this surgery done before you have it done, you’ll probably find yourself with lots of good advice that I never got.

Wear loose-fitting clothing

In the day-of-your-surgery instructions, it said to bring a loose-fitting shirt of some kind to wear after the surgery.  This is more important than you might think, and requires some prep.  I think it’s perfectly reasonable to acquire a new shirt for this specific purpose; a shirt that you might never wear again but will be happy to have for the few days you need it.

If you’re anything like me (tall, broad shoulders, and more than a little bit roly-poly) then the idea of a loose-fitting shirt may seem strange, so you might have to order something from big-and-tall shop or an athletic supplier — maybe one of those shirts that football players wear over their pads, perhaps.  For people who are of more ordinary dimensions, a shirt one or two sizes larger than normal is probably adequate, but don’t skimp.

If your procedure is like mine, here’s what’s going to happen to the shirt: after the procedure, they’re going to put an enormous bandage on your shoulder, and your shirt is going to need extra space in the shoulder and arm area to fit over this bandage, and getting the shirt arm is going to take some extra maneuvering room because your arm is going to be completely immobile.  Then you’re going to wear the shirt for the next few days, because it’s too much effort to take it off, and in the meanwhile your arm and shoulder are going to swell up quite a bit.

Long story short, I wore my largest, loosest-fitting shirt, and after two days I was seriously considering cutting it off my arm with scissors because it was uncomfortably tight and I believed it was beginning to cut off the circulation to my forearm.

I recommend a zip-up or quarter-zip hoodsie.  Or maybe a large bathrobe.

More loose-fitting clothing

Sweatpants or other pants with an elastic waist are a good idea for the time when you’re lounging around the house.  The benefit is that you can dress yourself (and use the toilet) without assistance.  Perhaps this is specific to my shoulder injury, but the motions of fastening buttons on my pants (or zipping my fly) and tightening my belt were just impossible.

More on clothing

Although most people I’ve heard from about shoulder surgery have been men, it’s not unheard of for women to get shoulder injuries as well, and women have an additional issue that men do not: bras.  If you normally wear a bra, you’re not going to be able to wear it after a serious shoulder injury and/or surgery, and figuring out how to unhook it when you do wear one might present new challenges — a front clasp might help.  I don’t have any concrete advice about how to deal with this, but if you’re a woman you probably have an idea or two.

A comfy reclining chair

One of the most difficult things for me to do after my surgery was sleep, despite the fact that it’s the thing I wanted to do more than anything else.  It’s difficult to find a comfortable position, and even more difficult to get into that position, because hard to get into bed or move around in bed without using your shoulder.

I do not have a recliner, but what I’ve heard is that they’re the best approach — especially the ones with the electric motors that raise and lower the chair.  You probably want to have pillows and blankets of various sizes to help hold your body in the right position — whatever is comfortable.

If you don’t have a recliner, at least try to sleep on a reasonably stiff mattress.  If you have one of those memory foam things, remove it for a few weeks.  I find that the softer the mattress, the more difficult it is to roll over and to sit up, because I sink in to it.  You’ll have a hard enough time moving around to begin with, and if you’re fighting to get out of a hole you’ve sunk down into, you might find it almost impossible.

Your experiences may vary — they almost certainly will.  The important thing is to find a way to get comfortable, which may require some inventiveness.  I recommend having a lot of pillows of various firmness and sizes available so you can construct whatever sort of support you need.

My physical therapist has told me several times that the first person to figure out the ideal way for people to sleep after shoulder surgery will be richer than the dreams of avarice.  I understand why.

A nightstand

Because getting up is going to be challenging for the first few days, you are going to want to have a few things closer at hand than usual:  tissues, reading glasses, books, e-reader, something to drink, telephone, snacks, medications, etc.

Some of the medications you might be prescribed should not be taken on an empty stomach, so it’s good to have them at hand, even if you wouldn’t ordinarily dream of eating in bed.

Household prep

Put new batteries in the TV remote.  You’re not going to be able to do this one-handed.

Vacuum.  Clean up.  This might be your last chance for a while.

One reader suggests getting a block of foam and cutting out slots for your smartphones, tablets, and other gadgets.  The idea is that this will make it easier to deal with these one-handed: put the gadget into the slot, and then it’s held steady and immobile so you can insert the power cable much more easily.

Pain management

Pain management is one of the things that is most likely to vary from person to person, from what I’ve been told.

The pain wasn’t horrible for me.  Annoying, but not agonizing.  It was enough to keep me from sleeping well, however, and it’s unhealthy when things interfere with your sleep over long periods of time.

I was given a prescription for hydrocodone, which didn’t seem to do anything to dull the pain.  (I suppose I could have tried a higher dosage, but at the recommended levels it didn’t seem to have any effect.)  I’ve heard that this is not unusual.  Pain killers are good for certain kinds of pain, but “bone pain” (if there is such a thing) isn’t one of them.  Fortunately, ordinary over-the-counter ibuprofen seems to help, and even-more-ordinary ice packs help even more.

Don’t get addicted to painkillers.  Those opioids will literally kill you.  Use what you need, but having a prescription for painkillers is not an excuse to get recreational with them.  As you’re reading this, you’re probably thinking to yourself “of course I’m not going to do anything as totally fucking stupid as that” and you’re probably right.  But after two weeks of not being able to sleep for more than a few minutes at a time, you may see things differently.  That is when people start to do totally fucking stupid things.

Ice bags

If your fridge doesn’t have an ice-maker, figure out some other way to stock up on ice.  Consider getting a special-purpose ice pack for your shoulder.  Start icing as soon as you get the big bandage off.

Entertainment

It’s good to have something to pass the time after your surgery.  Books are good, but only if you can do them one-handed.  I find an old-fashioned Kindle to work well (the kind with the button to flip the page, instead of the swiping motion).  Having some sort of or lap-desk thing might help.  (Some people are comfortable holding a book in one hand and turning the pages with a thumb, but if I do this for more than a few hours it provokes tendonitis, and more joint problems are something I just don’t need.)

Save something to binge-watch on Netflix or whatever streaming video service you like.  Something brainless.  Laughter is the best medicine; Archer got me through some tough hours, but again your mileage may vary.

After the surgery

Chances are good that you’ll be intubated during the surgery.  In simple terms, they’re going to snake a tube down your throat to make sure you can breath.  The problem is that in some cases, when they snake the tube down your throat, it requires a little force, leaving small scratches, which feels like a sore throat and can cause you to cough up small amounts of blood.  (This is the sort of thing you should definitely call your surgeon about, if you experience it, but it’s not uncommon and you shouldn’t panic immediately.)

You want to take this into consideration when figuring out what to eat for your first few meals after the surgery.

Don’t be an idiot like me and eat a handful of tortilla chips the minute you get home from the hospital.  You might regret this very much.

Move

Stop using the sling as soon as you can.  You’re not trying to get exercise yet, but you want to start moving the shoulder a little bit.  Don’t let it get frozen.  Keep it loose.

Of course, if your surgeon gives you a shoulder brace or immobilizer, then that’s a different story.  Do whatever your surgeon says; mine said to lose the sling as quickly as possible.

Don’t throw away the sling, however.  Bring it everywhere you go.  It’s very handy when you’re interacting with people who ordinarily want you to hold doors open for them, or shake hands, or pass them something, or otherwise expect you to do something with your shoulder that you’re just not ready to do.  Nobody is going to give you a welcome-back-from-your-surgery hug when you’re wearing a sling, but if you’re not wearing a sling and your arm is just hanging down at your side, then your injury is, for all practical purposes, invisible.  A sling is a convenient way to let people know that you’re not yourself yet.

Body glide

My arm swelled up to the point where the skin in my armpit was rubbed raw, because there was so much pressure on it when I moved my arm.  This just added to my misery.  Blisters on your pectorals from your biceps rubbing against them is even less fun than it sounds.

There is a product called “Body Glide”, which is probably available at your local pharmacy or market, that helps with this.  It’s meant for runners or other athletes who have problems with body parts rubbing together on long runs or whatever; there are probably similar products with other names, but this is the one I used.  It was very handy for a few weeks while the swelling abated.

Do the physical therapy

You’re going to ask yourself questions like “Does it really matter whether I do shoulder rolls six times a day or seven?” or “Why should I swing my arm back and forth every two hours?  It doesn’t seem to do a thing.”

Do them anyway.  Just do them.  It might seem like nothing is happening, but it is.  The progress might be so slow that it doesn’t seem like progress at all, and some days are going to be worse than the day before, but in a month or two you’ll find yourself doing things that seemed impossible just a few weeks earlier — first it will be small things like scratching your own ear, or putting on deodorant, but soon it will be major things.  Before you know it, you will stop thinking about your shoulder all the time and start using your arm and hand without wincing in anticipation.

Recovery is the hardest part.  The surgery is the simple part; you slept through it.  Keeping with the program of exercises and stretches and whatever else your physical therapist specifies is the hard part.  Keep with it.

It was my turn to cook the dinner for Chinese New Year this year.

We didn’t want anything too elaborate.  It was already a busy day.  Most of the traditional foods, therefore, were omitted.

At 7:15 I began by mincing an ounce of fresh ginger, and then placing it in a small glass bowl and combining with rice wine vinegar, soy sauce, a touch of white pepper, and a dash of sugar. I wanted to let the vinegar work on the ginger for a while, so that the flavor would infuse the liquid. I would have chopped some scallions to add to the mix, but I had none on hand.

Then I dinked around on fb for a little while.

Around 7:40, I started a large pot of water boiling, and then started to clean a pile of Chinese broccoli. I then removed the stems, separating them from the leaves, and set each aside in different bowls. I cut the stems into two-inch segments.

Around 7:45, I heated a small amount of olive oil in our large wok. When it was hot enough to make water dance, I added the broccoli stems and stir-fried them for a minute, and then added a bit of sriracha sauce, and then a few lumps of black-beans and garlic sauce. When the sauce had liquified, I reduced the heat and added a few ounces of water to the wok and covered it for a few moments to let it steam. After a few minutes of intermittent stirring, I placed the broccoli and reduced sauce in a covered bowl so it would not be cold by the time we sat down to eat.

Around 7:50, I heated a larger amount of corn oil in the wok, and then introduced the broccoli leaves, stirring them constantly until each leaf was coated with the hot oil.  I then reduced the heat, added a bit of salt and fresh black pepper, and a small amount of fermented black bean sauce.  I let it simmer for a few moments until all most of the moisture was out of the leaves.

While the broccoli simmered, I started to heat oil in frying pan to cook dumplings.  We did store-bought dumplings this year; my wife didn’t want to go through the rigamarole of making them from scratch.  It’s the sort of thing that requires time from the whole family, at least in the incompetent labor-intensive way we make them.

I removed the broccoli from the wok and place it in a second bowl.  I then lined the frying pan with pork and shrimp dumplings and covered the pan while it slowly heated up.

By this time, the pot of water was at a steep boil.  I added a dollop of oil and a dash of salt to keep the dumplings from sticking, and then dumped in a bunch of chicken dumplings.  (My older daughter does not eat pork, and she prefers her dumplings boiled instead of pan-fried.)  I then increased the heat to bring the water back to a boil, and then turned my attention back to the frying pan.  I checked every minute or so to see whether the dumplings had started to brown on the bottom, and whether the oil was getting too hot.  When the dumplings started to show signs of browning, I added half a cup of water, which made its usual dramatic sizzle, and then covered the pan to let them steam.

I checked on the pot.  It wasn’t boiling again yet, nor were the dumplings floating yet.  I stirred them gently to make sure they weren’t clumping together too much.

After a few minutes, the water from the frying pan had mostly evaporated, and the skin of the pan-fried dumplings was soft.  I added a second half-cup of water and let them steam a little longer.

My older daughter finished setting the table and poured drinks for everyone.

Soon the dumplings in the pot were starting, one by one, to rise to the top, and the water neared boiling.  I added a cup of cold water and waited for them to boil again.  In a few minutes, they were ready to serve.  I fished them out of the water with a slotted spoon and placed them in a serving bowl, and them placed them on the table, in front of my older daughter’s place.  She sat at the table, eying them hungrily.

I removed the cover from the frying pan and let the last moisture evaporate from the pan.  As it started to sizzle again, I turned off the heat and placed them in a serving bowl.

At 8:15, my wife and younger daughter had come home from gymnastics and were washing their hands.  As they seated themselves, I placed pan-fried dumplings and the ginger sauce on the table.

Then we feasted on the dumplings and broccoli.

At approximately 9:00, my wife lamented that she had forgotten to tell me that she’d also bought some dragon fruit.  I guess we’ll have that tonight.

I expected to like the television show Agent Carter.  At first glance, it appears to have all the ingredients of a television show that I would make an effort to reserve space for on my DVR — it takes place in the Marvel Universe; the apparent storyline is woven around events of importance in that universe; the titular character, Peggy Carter, seemed promising when we saw her in the Captain America movies, and I’m a sucker for a period piece.  Honestly, I’d probably tune in just to see the postwar cars and clothing.

And I feel that I was probably expected to like the show for these reasons, and so perhaps the writers and producers thought that was enough and didn’t bother to provide the real reason people like me watch these shows, which is because we find the characters interesting and want to learn more about them.  An essential, proven element in a superhero tale is the origin story.  What makes the hero willing and able to the things that he or she does?  What makes them different?  What inner conflict motivates them?  Who are they?  Why should we care what happens to them?

None of these questions have been addressed about Peggy Carter, not even glancingly.

In Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D, the other show that shares the timeslot with Agent Carter, there is a similar situation — we don’t know much about most of the main characters, particularly Skye.  But unlike Agent Carter, Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D uses this mystery as motivation, and most of the episodes so far have revealed, in at least a small way, some important information about at least one of the characters.  The characters are interested in each other and we watch them reveal their pasts — or have the secrets of their past torn away.  We’ve known since early in season one that Skye is some sort of space alien mutant star child, but deep into season two we still don’t know whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

Peggy Carter isn’t interesting.  Nobody is trying to find out more about her.  There’s only one character — a waitress in a diner that Peggy frequents — who even seems to have any interest in her as a human being.  We don’t know where she’s from, besides having a sort of watered-down British accent.  We don’t know if her parents are living or dead, or whether she has any siblings.  We don’t know where she went to school, although this would probably be interesting because she seems remarkably well educated on many subjects and is fluent in a surprising number of languages.  We don’t know how or why she entered the military, or how she ended up attached to an American unit, although again this would probably be interesting.  We don’t know why she chose to return to New York City after the war, since she appears to have no friends there and she was only stationed there briefly during the war — why didn’t she return home and work for an agency like MI-5 that might better appreciate her talents?  We don’t know where she picked up her extraordinary hand-to-hand combat skills — the sort of skills that would typically require many years of dedicated effort (starting long before the war) to acquire, or some sort of latent supernatural ability.  Either way, it’s conceivable that there’s a story there, and we’re not hearing it.  She could be from Mars, for all we know.

And there’s nothing to suggest that we are ever going to learn more.  Unless there’s a sudden change in the narrative, Peggy Carter has the unenviable role as the least interesting, most predictable person in her own show.

The truly broken thing about this situation is that the writers haven’t completely abandoned the concept of the origin story — they just haven’t given Peggy one.  They’ve teased us with tidbits of the backstory of Jarvis, Howard Stark’s butler, who has also shown something resembling character development.

Maybe they’ll do a show about him.

The current string of snowstorms we’re experiencing around Boston has reached historic proportions — I supposed it’s possible that people will compare future snowstorms to the weather of this month for years to come — but this isn’t the worst or most disruptive snowstorm I’ve lived through.  And it certainly isn’t the most magical.  That title seems secure.

Perhaps it was the same storm as the Blizzard of ’78.  It was around that time, but I don’t remember precisely.  In any case, if it was the same storm, I experienced it differently because at that time I lived far from Boston.  Instead of deep, drifting snow, the storm began with rapidly-falling, heavy snow, followed by a brief period of heavy rain, clearing skies, and then temperatures falling to well below freezing overnight.

The next morning, everything looked glazed, in the most literal sense.  All edges were smoothed by a coat of ice.  The glare of the sun was brilliant across the empty fields, their features smoothed away by a foot of snow and ice.

The coat of ice on top of the snow was strong enough that I could stand on it, and it was so slippery that it was challenging to keep my footing.  It was like walking on oiled glass.

Falling on the ice didn’t break the crust.  I tried breaking through the ice by stamping on it, but that didn’t break it either.  Similarly, the runners of our sled didn’t break through, which meant that the sled was unbelievably fast — and it was also very difficult to climb any hills to sled down, because it was so slippery.  I had to get down on all fours and climb the hills on my hands and knees, since the fabric of my pants and gloves provided more friction to the ice than my galoshes.  Hills that were scarcely taller than my own height would let the sled run for hundreds of yards.

I don’t know where the idea came from, but I’m going to claim it as my own.  It’s the kind of hair-brained, irresponsible thing that I would have done.  I looked at the rolling hills of the golf course behind our house, and I looked at the seemingly impenetrable crust of ice covering them, and I went and put on my ice skates and spent a magical day cross-country skating.