Surgery Week

It's surgery week. On Friday this week (yes, Friday the 13th) I am finally having my shoulder reconstruction surgery. One year, two months and 28 days after the accident at work that busted my shoulder.

This process and the unreasonably lengthy wait for surgery have taught me many things. My pearls of wisdom are below.

The only person that truly has your back is yourself - closely followed by your BFF. I bet that the person who could have cut down on the time I've been waiting for surgery by actually doing their job and the paperwork that would have expedited the process 14 months and 28 days ago won't a) visit me in hospital, b) care that I'm having surgery or c) even wish me well on the road to recovery. I'm still very disappointed that I trusted this person. Oh well, lesson learned, move on!  Ps I'm un-friending them on Facebook today. Whatever. YOLO.

Organisation and planning and preparation prevents a veritable tonne of frustration post-op. I consider myself to be extremely well prepared for the aftermath - meals cooked and frozen in portioned containers, paper plates and plastic cutlery, mugs with lids, a long-arm reacher, front-opening bras (sorry boys, TMI, I know!), clothes that are easy to put on with one arm, light but warm blankets and doonas on the bed, elastic lace locks for my shoes, electric toothbrush - etc.

Of course, there will inevitably be stuff I've forgotten about. But I'll deal with that later.  At least with a long arm reacher in the house, if I drop anything on the floor it won't be sacrificed to the floor gods now.

Side-splitting comedies and dance flicks are not good to have on your iPad post-op. Fits of laughter will result in pain, and dance flicks will result in attempts to boogie in the bed and chair, which will result in pain.

Making sure you have entertainment for the hours you will be spending alone in hospital with only beeping machines and overworked nurses for company is imperative. Poor nurses. I'm converting my movies into an iPad-friendly format as I type. Obviously not the funny or dance ones. More stuff like Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz, The Bucket List, etc, is required.

That's about it. I'm sure I'll be far more amusing next week on painkillers, using Dragon dictation for blog posts, seeing as I won't be able to write, type or use my right hand properly for weeks. Did I mention I'm right-handed. Oh yes...that's another little challenge to deal with!