Surgery

June 23rd, 2009

July 9th, 2010

Let's hope we never get to make a comparison with these pictures ever again! I can not tell you how relieved I am that today is over, and we can move forward. I'm not thrilled over the headache I have but figured i'd be nice and update before I take a nice long nap! I am pretty sure I had more anxiety today then Derrik did. As much as I feel bad that he had to have his arm cut open and be in pain, I sometimes think it's even harder to sit back and watch the one you love be in pain like that. When they sit there and slice his arm open he gets to be sleeping all comfy on the table while I watch them physically take the knife to his arm and watch the next twelve months of our life become a firm reality. I was praying so hard when they opened his arm that Doc would give us a big thumbs up that it all looked great, and they'd close his arm back up. Of course that didn't happen, and out came the drill and lots of cutting. I won't get into any more details then that, but Derrik came out of the surgery today with a second Tommy John surgery done to his arm.

He did much better with the anethesia this time. Last time it took three hours in recovery compared to the one hour this time. He looked much better, and seemed to deal with it all much better. Of course he is in pain as expected, but is in great spirits.

After Doc was done for the day he came in to talk with us. He told us when he opened his arm up he was expecting to see his UCL (the ligament) completley blown out. He said it wasn't great, but it wasn't a complete loss either. He said he had to make the decision then to close up and have Derrik try to continue rehab or to re-do the surgery. He said he needed to make a decision he could go to sleep feeling good about at night so he went ahead with the surgery. He repaired the ligament he put in last year, put the new one in (from Derrik's left arm this time), added some extra stitching along the way, cleaned up the bones in the area (no significant bone spurs though), and did the PRP (which I explained in the post below - they will do a few more of these injections in the weeks to come). He said from a surgeons point of view he sees no reason why Derrik can't go on and have a very successful baseball career. He said his bones are all still very strong, the original ligament wasn't completely awful, and the muscles in the area looked great. He seemed very confident in his work so we will allow ourselves to feel that way too.

The view we saw of the O.R. and there is a t.v. with a close up of the opening in his arm

(not sure if this was allowed... I snuck the picture because Derrik wanted to see what we saw)

Our Little Man while Daddy was in surgery

Grammy was sending them to me to keep my mind busy
Thank you friends and family for all the love and support!
We are beyond greatful to be moving forward at this point :)
Off to nap!!!