Out of the Sling! Sort Of

September 2, 2024May 24, 2025FrancescaProductivity

I had shoulder surgery on 7/31 to fix a torn tendon. The orthopedic doctor and his wonderful colleagues did a fantastic job fixing my dislocated ankle in 2022, so I had complete faith that repairing a tendon would go well. So far, it’s distressing, but I’m confident I will be okay.

I heard from people who had shoulder surgery about the awful pain and the long recovery time. The doctor told me it’s a nine-to-twelve-month recovery. Yikes! However, those I know who had shoulder surgery said they were doing great (as in how they felt before the injury) in only six months, so I’m shooting for that. But the pain is brutal. The first two weeks were not too bad, but since I’m doing physical therapy, it’s rough. I’m using this cold therapy machine, and it does ease the pain.

I’m at the one-month mark, and the physical therapist said I could get out of the shoulder sling for 25%—50 % of the day. I still have to wear it to bed or when I go out, but this week coming up, I can get out of it longer. It’s been difficult to type with one hand, and today, I’m giving it a shot with two hands. It’s challenging, but I took breaks to get it done because I had to get a blog post out today. Plus, I miss doing it.

When we’re injured or in pain, it’s easy to fall prey to the woe-is-me mentality.

I didn’t go that far, but I lost my mojo to do the blog since I couldn’t type like I was used to doing it on the computer.

I tried to use the dictation feature on my computer, but I couldn’t get it to work. I researched with one hand, clicked with the mouse, and tried to get help to no avail. Apparently, something is wrong with it because I tried everything I learned. The microphone I got worked, but it would only type a few seconds, then stop, and I’d have to start the process all over again, clicking the microphone and speaking quickly, and it would shut down. I couldn’t handle the pressure! haha

I also used the Notes app on my phone to voice type, then copied and pasted it to an email and emailed it to myself. After that, I copied and pasted it into WordPress to modify it, but I could only do a paragraph at a time. The arduous task left me drained and out of juice to be creative. That’s okay.

Then I thought, why not voice record an email and send it to myself? Doing that helped it stay in the same format, and it worked! I still have to rework it, but it’s okay.