Hi friends!
To avoid 72 separate posts about AC’s shoulder saga, we’re going to have this single, running post, that I’ll update regularly. If you want to know how things are going, keep checking back here 🙂
Jan. 23: At AC’s appointment in Austin yesterday, the ortho strongly encouraged us to have AC’s surgery at our final destination so AC can attend follow-up appointments. Immediately after leaving his office, we made some quick calls to some of AC’s connections from college athletics and got yet another appointment for Wednesday morning in Greensboro, NC. We booked a flight yesterday, got on a plane around noon today, and now we’re on our way to a friend’s house where we’ll crash until tomorrow’s appointment.
FAQ #1: Are we staying on the east coast? Is the adventure over?
Not yet. Our truck is still in Austin (parked at a friend’s house) and we kinda need that so we’ll fly back out at an undetermined future date to hop back in the truck and finish our adventure.
FAQ #2: How is AC feeling and what will recovery look like?
She’s definitely been better, but she’s hanging in there. We’re staying on top of pain meds and she’s still cracking jokes. We’re not sure what recovery will look like yet, but we think it will be about 6 months between surgery and physical therapy.
And that’s all the info I have right now. Hopefully we’ll be able to answer a lot more questions and make further plans after we talk to the doc tomorrow so I’ll post an update for you when I have one.
Jan. 24: Our appointment in Greensboro this morning didn’t quite give us the answers we wanted. We were hoping the doc would take a quick look and immediately schedule surgery. However, Dr. Bokshan (pronounced bo-shan, the k is silent) wants an MRI so he can make sure there’s no additional damage– like a torn rotator– that he needs to address in surgery. He seems like a cool dude and I can understand the need for a more thorough check of the injury, so we can’t be mad about it. We did get a much better x-ray, for those who think this kind of stuff is cool!
We ate lunch at Panda Express and we’re really hoping AC’s fortune cookie is onto something.
Now we’re waiting on insurance authorization for the MRI before we can schedule that visit. Authorization could take a couple of days, but Dr. Bokshan said he was going to try to “shotgun” it and get it through quickly (hopefully by the end of the day) so he can schedule AC for surgery early next week.
At the moment, we’re visiting AC’s old basketball team at UNCG so she’s in good spirits!
Jan. 24, update #2: AC is getting an MRI tomorrow and we’ve scheduled surgery for Feb. 1. We’ll stay with my parents until the first follow-up appointment on Feb. 15, then probably fly back to Austin on Feb. 16 and pick up where we left off.
Jan. 25: AC had her MRI today and the summary reads…
…which translates to “she really f@#!ed up her shoulder.” Just like we thought, she fully tore her AC and CC ligaments.
My parents are coming to pick us up tomorrow and we’ll stay with them until we head back to Greensboro for surgery next week.
Feb. 1, update #1: It’s surgery day! AC was just taken into surgery (1:25pm) so I’ll update y’all again in about an hour and a half when she’s out.
Update #2: (4:40pm) She’s finally out of surgery. Took about twice as long as planned b/c part of her shoulder is curved, where it’s straight on my people (why is her body so weird?!). So the doctor had to take a different route to get her back together. But he said she did great and is rock solid now.
Until next time,
Charli
Glad AC is getting the medical care she needs and y’all are getting to spend some time with basketball pals!
That’s a lot of destruction! Hope going under the knife goes well and y’all always have a room here!