Nonetheless, all of this is a necessary part of the entire Tommy John process. As I mentioned in the last blog post I wrote on Wednesday, my surgery went off smoothly last Thursday, Jul 21st. I showed up at the Surgical Center at the Andrews Institute at 5:30 AM and was quickly processed and put in the O.R waiting room. I spent about 20 minutes with the surgical nurse answering questions and chatting. Once it was reassured that I would be physically fit enough to withstand the anesthesia, we shot the breeze for a few minutes. She asked me if I pitched for the Yankees, being that I was from New York. I smiled politely and said no, chuckling in my head that such a thought could be processed. It still hadn't set in yet at that point that I was in a surgical center that tended to such high profile athletes on a daily basis. We spoke for a few minutes about the laurels of travel nursing, which she'd done (my girlfriend is a recent nursing school graduate and is weighing her current career options). After a bit of time, in came Dr. Hickman, the anesthesiologist I'd met with the day before. We chatted for a few minutes about Terrell Owens, who had been to the Andrews Institute and had taken a picture with the doctor's daughter, and about his 200-acre family farm in eastern Tennessee. At about 6:45, I said goodbye to my dad and the nurses wheeled me into the O.R. A few minutes later, the anesthesia was administered and I was dead to the world.
I awoke in the recovery room, groggy and complaining it was hot. I later found out that Dr. Andrews informed my dad I was a "baby" because I was complaining of the temperature, which he got a kick out of. After about an hour in the recovery room they ruled that I was stable enough to be released and went back to the hotel with my dad.
The surgery itself was a major success. Dr. Andrews harvested the tendon out of the palmaris longus region, which is in the wrist. For those who don't know, if you touch your thumb and your pinky together in opposition, the palmaris longus tendon will be in full display in the wrist. If the doctor is unable to extract the tendon out of this area then he will resort to extracting it out of the back of the knee, or the lower hamstring. Once he harvested the tendon out of my wrist, he moved the ulnar nerve out of the way in the elbow and drills holes into the bone. The next step is to weave the tendon into the holes in the bone to create the new ulnar collateral ligament. Dr. Andrews explained to me that with most of his patients, he has trouble getting two full loops through the bone with the tendon. But for some reason my tendon was long and strong and therefore he was able to get three full loops through my bone. In fact, Dr. Andrews let my father watch the operation from an observation deck ("It was awesome" -Dad), and paused during the surgery to turn to him and speak through a microphone, saying, "This is going REALLY well."
The rest of Thursday was spent relaxing in the hotel room. I took a long extended nap, still quite woozy and tired from the surgery. After awakening, it was time for me to get used to life with one arm. My left arm is in a hard splint covered by a lot of ace bandaging and a sling. The splint runs all the way from my wrist to just underneath my armpit, causing me to be completely unable to bend my arm at all out of the 90 degree angle they fitted it in (hence all the difficulties I listed previously).
On Friday I arose with my father and headed back to the Andrews Institute to meet with the physical therapists. It was there that I received my protocol for the future. From that point until the following Tuesday (tomorrow), I'd be stuck in the sling and completely immobile. They provided me with some light exercises for my shoulder, just enough to keep the muscular system moving and the blood flowing through the area, as well as a few exercises to prevent my neck from getting too stiff. Dr. Andrews had also suggested to continually try to move my fingers around and grip things, because the action of moving the ulnar nerve would cause some difficulty in the nerve endings in my fingers. Last night was the first night I was able to make a complete fist, and can finally now hold things with my left hand without any assistance. I am icing several times a day and continuing these exercises for now, although I know there is not much else that can be done. Tomorrow is my first physical therapy appointment back home in New York and it is there that I am supposed to get the dressing changed and switch from the sling and into the "bionic arm" that will be placed on my arm for approximately six weeks. I am hopeful that the process of the bionic arm can be quicker than usual being that Dr. Andrews expressed the possibility that my recovery could be faster because of the usage of the additional loop of the tendon in surgery. However, I know that nothing should be rushed further than it needs to in this process. The brace will be in place to gradually extend my arm and a step cannot be skipped.
For now that's about all from this front. I will blog again in a few days after my physical therapy appointment and update the entire process once more. Hopefully it will be easier to type then than it is now, being that I'm handicapped to typing with just one hand.
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