Shoulder Replacement

On Friday January 9th I took Margarit in for her shoulder replacement surgery.  She had been waiting for several years for this day, and when it finally arrived there was some nervous anticipation.  I dropped her off at the clinic at 6:45AM.  Her's was the first surgery of the day with her surgeon.  She was in the operating room by 7:30AM.  At about 10:30 I got a call advising that she had been in recovery for around half and hour, and I should make my way down to pick her up.  I arrived at the clinic around 11:15.  They monitored her oxygen levels for a bit, and then ran through all the medications and stuff that she has to deal with in the coming days.  By shortly after 12:00 noon I had her back home and resting.

I had mixed feelings about the fact that she waited years for a procedure that took a couple hours.  We are grateful that her pain issues have finally been addressed, but a little disappointed that she had to wait so long.

The operation was done at the Alberta Surgical Center, a private clinic that is funded by Alberta Health.  It was very organized and efficient and she was treated very well.  I have no issue with a private clinic such as this being run for profit, as long as it is covered by our health system and everyone has equal access to it.  There are mixed opinions about this concept but anything that improves access and takes some of the load off the overburdened hospitals is a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.  The only things we had to pay out of pocket for were her prescriptions, and a sling.

The procedure that Margarit had done is a Reverse Shoulder Arthroplasty.  In a healthy shoulder there is a ball at the upper end of the humerus [arm bone] that fits into a socket on the scapula [shoulder blade].  The standard surgery involves replacing these components with artificial ones.  In her case the joint was so badly deteriorated that they had to do the reverse process, and put an artificial ball on the scapula, and a plate on the humerus.  It makes me wonder that if they had done the surgery sooner, perhaps the more traditional hardware could have been used.  In any event, this process is supposed to work well and eventually will provide her with near normal range of motion.

She tells me that the pain is a little less than she had expected.  She has been resting for a couple of days now and is in generally good spirits.  She can't really lay down to sleep yet so she is in bed, in a partially sitting position, trying to catch a little sleep.  Mostly she just dozes for short stretches but this should improve over the coming days and weeks as the healing progresses.  Later today I will take her in for a follow up x-ray to make sure that everything is properly in place.  She will also start doing some daily exercises.