by Jeff"Why do you want a copy of your MRI?"

"I'm writing about fighting and this surgery is a big part of it."

Dr. Geraldi looks at me like I have a toad on my head.

"Plus, people like pictures."

He looks down and makes a note in my chart. "Alright, well how do you feel?"

"I feel ok. The pain killers take the edge off and most of the swelling has gone down. I slept for like three days after the surgery though."

"Yeah, that's to be expected." He nods to my arm. "You still need that sling?"

I slip off the fabric sling that was given to me when I left the hospital. "No, I wear it about half the day and the other half I'm just careful how I move the arm around." I work my shoulder in a loose circle, mostly just to show that I can do it.

"Great. I've got the images from the camera we used during the procedure. Let's go over what we found and what I did for you."

He pulls out a stack of pictures with notes scratched all over them. They don't look like much of anything to me until he explains what it is I'm looking at.

"This is what your joint should look like. Smooth surfaces. The cartilage isn't pitted or damaged in any way. But when we went in, the first thing I found was this:"

"There were pieces of cartilage and tissue just floating around in there. Some had to be cut away but a lot of it was just loose."

"These were all vacuumed out."

"Your labrum should look like the tissue you see off to the left-- nice and smooth. But on the right you can just see the beginning of your tear."

"It gets worse."

"As you can see the labrum is torn up pretty bad. However, the tear is not as deep as we thought it would be. Think of it like a tile floor. Your tiles are torn up but the thick floor underneath is intact. This actually complicates things. The plan was to stitch the wound closed but that delicate tissue on the surface cannot be sewn. It's more like a pothole than a rift and there is no real way to close it. A cadaver graft would be best, but it would be near impossible to get in there."

"So, what did you do?" I'm thankful that some dead guys tissue wasn't put in me. That's a bit creepy.

"Well the best thing for an injury like this is for you to stay off it for a few months and let it heal, but you passed that window long ago. So I roughed it up-- made some fresh blood-- so that it's a new injury. Then we drained the fluid from the joint to make sure there was blood flowing around. As you can see, there was."

"The debridement of the cartilage was no problem. That's an easy fix. The broken bone had already fused into its own shape, but it didn't look like it was snagging on anything or impeding joint movement."

"So the labrum thing is a bit of a toss up?"

"Well, as long as you rehab it correctly it should heal up fine. It's like a field missing a patch of grass. We laid the seed and fertilized it, now you just have to give it the right conditions to grow. We don't know for sure how long it will take to fill in, but beyond that it should heal just fine."

This is great. Ridiculously awesome. I've been waiting for this for months and to finally be told that everything is good-- hell to be shown in pictures-- is amazing. I'm stoked.

Dr. Geraldi gives me some rehab instructions, a script for the physical therapy and tells me to book an appointment in a month.

"Thanks doc, really, I can't thank you enough." I shake his hand and leave his office with a big fucking grin on my face.

Posted by Jeff at 8:10 PM

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