Before and after

 

 

The two pictures kind of look the same.

 

Except in one she has a sling and is a little loopier, and in less pain, than in the other.

 

We’re having a comfortable evening and today’s anesthesia is gradually wearing off.  The story might be a little different tomorrow as the implanted painkillers wear off too.  The surgeon did a lot.  The cuff was torn in two pieces.  He sewed them back together, then gave them two new attachment points on the bone.  He fixed an inflamed bursa and tendon.  He cleaned up some arthritis.  He removed a bone spur.  He excised a lipoma.  Originally, he thought the lump on top of her shoulder might be a lipoma, but it didn’t show up as a lipoma on the MRI, so he had to conclude it must be something else; but when he got inside it just looked like a lipoma so he took it out.  He thought a biceps tendon might need repairing or cutting, but it didn’t because it was already gone.  It must have been clipped off in a previous surgery.  It’s one of those situations where you have two different tendons doing the same thing and you only really need one.  Just like John Elway.  We thought it was a catastrophe when, in the middle of his career, he blew a tendon in his throwing arm, but it was the same tendon as this.  They never repaired it and it had no effect on his throwing motion, so from that lesson we can expect that Judy’s throwing motion won’t change at all.