Jon's Shoulder Surgery

Being a baseball player all your life takes a toll on your shoulder, especially when you were a pitcher for many years. Jon's been dealing with shoulder pain for about 8 years. Earlier this summer he made a beautiful diving play with his arm completely outstretched and landed on it, almost completely tearing the rotator cuff. After a month of physical therapy and no progress in healing, he was then allowed to have an MRI (silly insurance policies), only to discover the almost complete tear. He had surgery today. Here he is getting prepped to go under.

His surgery was projected to be about 1 1/2 hours, but ended up being 2 1/2 hours. Once they were in there, they discovered other areas of the shoulder that needed repaired as well.

Here he is settled at home and still smiling. . .because the nerve block in his arm is still working. However, give him another 5 hours after this picture and it's a different story. In this picture he's hooked up to an icing system called, "Game Ready." Besides pain meds, this unit has been his best friend. It's an awesome system that ices and compresses the shoulder in 30 min. cycles, actually pumping a perfect set temperature of cold water all around the shoulder area. So much for the messy ice packs and keeping track of time, this system is wonderful! He's got at least 4 months of physical therapy ahead of him, but we're hoping that this will all be worth it and that he'll be able to play ball pain free again.