After eight months of waiting I'm finally having surgery to fix my shoulder this Friday. Surgeons gonna cut my arm off and reattach it using left over scraps of the undead. Watch your brains the next time I'm around.

I'm scared to death of this and what the first few weeks after will be like. My surgeon seems to think i'm a drug addict and refuses to prescribe me pain meds that will work. I'm trying to work with my gp to get something, but i'm running out of time to fix this, and she's not working today or tomorrow. the risk of aids, hepatitis, and permanent paralysis are just little afterthoughts of stress right now. i keep trying to remind myself of how nice it was after the first surgery to be able to do things without always worrying about my shoulder giving out. this should get me back to that place.

Please send your positive thoughts friday around 8:30.

its getting harder and harder to deal with being injured and still stay positive. right after i dislocated my shoulder I was in a truly great mood. i've never been so happy to not be dead. now its been a month and a half. i have this arm that barely works. i know i need surgery. i have a torn labrum, they apparently don't heal on their own. but instead of moving forward and getting this fixed i'm fighting my way through kaiser to be treated at all. about a week after the injury i was scheduled for an appointment with my assigned surgeon, but not until may. i've met the surgeon, he's come into the room while i was seeing the physicians assistant. the surgery he wants to do is just way too extreme, and i don't trust the guy. the PA was happy to set me up for a second opinion but ignored me when i asked that it be in pleasanton (where i usually go) and set me up with a non-shoulder specialist in union city. i am seeing a physical therapist. it's the only thing that's going well. unfortunately i'm now a case study for the PT's fellowship, neither she nor any of her professors have seen or heard of a case like mine. she keeps asking me what's worked in the past. it's like having self directed PT. i did get a recommendation for a surgeon from her, only to find out that the referral from the PA wasn't valid in pleasanton. i spent the last week trying to get a referral. when i first started trying the guy had multiple free apointments. now that i finally have the correct referral he is booked solid through the end of may and they aren't scheduling june yet. so now i hurt all the time, i can't lift anything heavier than a cup of coffee, and sometime not even that, i can barely drive, simple things like getting groceries up the stairs is a huge hassle. i could handle all of that if there was an end in sight, but there's not. it'll be probably two and a half months before i see the surgeon, if not more. if what's happened so far is any indication it'll be several months after that before i have the surgery. the last surgery i had, the recovery period was 6 months to basic functioning, 2 years to full recovery and i don't yet know is this one will be worse.

I recently decided to take skydiving lessons. Saturday was my second jump. It went great until I dislocated my shoulder opening the parachute. A mile above ground with landing coming up soon is not the time to deal with a major injury. I managed to get it back into place, cuz I sure as hell wasn't going to pound in a landing on a dislocated shoulder and both hands are needed right before the moment when the earth rears up and gives you a giant love tap.

today I got to see the orthopedist. If I opt to have surgery to fix it, its going to mean having the soft tissues reinforced with cadaver tendons. I'll be stronger, faster, bionic Mehagan.

I'm not so sure how I feel about this. I think I'm ok with the dead people parts....i think. I also have this issue where I already had one surgery on my shoulder. it was supposed to be a permanent fix. It failed at a really bad time. that surgery was an all around hellish experience. the anasthesiologist messed up so that even with morphine i was in uncontrollable pain. I was utterly helpless for weeks, couldn't really work for months. I really don't want to repeat it, and the next level surgery sounds worse.

the overall rush of jumping from an almost perfectly good airplane left me in this good mood that it seemed like nothing could disrupt, but this managed to break through my happy joy state.

i need hugs.

I'm moving this weekend. I need people to help. I don't have a lot of stuff, so this shouldn't take too long, but its more than I can do myself. If you can help me out on Saturday please let me know.

Thanks.