My Journey with CRPS

The technical term for the surgery I had done was "open revision capsular shift with augmented subscapularis repair" Really big words for saying that they fixed the subscap tear and re-tightenedthe capsule. It wasn't easy, apparently the subscap had torn shortly following the previous surgery and was completely scarred down which required extensive freeing up of before the surgery could even be performed. I woke up in a lot of pain and being allergic to morphine it was hard to control the pain. Again I had the hypersensitivity around the incision and it was a tough recovery. But I again I battled through the feather torture and eventually the sensitivity settled down. The recovery lasted much longer though than what the military was prepared to give me and a medical board was started to decide if I was fit for duty. After struggling through the med board we jointly came to the conclusion that instead of being discharged medically I should just finish my enlistment and not re-enlist. 

I underwent another surgery at West Point in 2005 to clean up the scar tissue and remove some hardware that was causing extra pain. This was a simple scope and I recovered from this fine.

The shoulder was doing fine - I just was not fit enough to perform my military duties but I found a job at a local research facility working as a lab tech. This was very strenuous on my still healing shoulder, I was *still* going to physical therapy and the more I beat up on it the worse it got. But I had to work so I found another ortho doc for follow ups and business went on as usual. 

A routine MRI to check on things showed bad news - it looked like the subscap was torn again and I was again having problems with instability. I was referred to Mass General Hospital and Harvard Shoulder Service. It was decided that the instability would be taken care of with yet another surgery. I was getting tired of all these surgeries with no benefit and a lot of pain and recovery after but I went along with it one more time. I would most likely need 6 months to recover from this surgery and went into it thinking I would probably have to lose my job but I had short-term and long-term disability with this job so I knew I would be okay for at least 6 months.