John Nile Wendorf
In July, 2017, I was on the loosing end of a battle for “King of the Mountain.” It was me versus four grandkids. The result was multiple tears to the left rotator cuff as well as some other shoulder damage.
Dr. Verma operated in early December 2017. The outpatient procedure went off without a hitch and I was home that evening to start my recovery and rehab.
Dr Verma and his team of Physician’s Assistants (Katie Gross and Brendan Sweeney) just inspire a calm confidence. They always had the time to answer every question and clearly laid out the journey I was on towards a full recovery. I got hooked up with one of their Physical Therapists (Irish Thompson) at their Oak Park Office. You could tell they were working as a team, emailing back and forth as needed, to insure my physical therapy had the desired outcome of full motion, pain elimination with building strength back into my shoulder.
They gave me practical advice to manage the pain that is always part of these types of procedures. I followed their instructions and I was pretty much off the pain medicine by the end of February. The pain I did experience never significantly disrupted my active lifestyle after the first couple of weeks.
I made it a priority to keep my physical therapy appointments with Irish on a two to three times a week schedule. In between those appointments, I went to the health club another one or two times a week and repeated the exercises on my own. Irish would always print out the worksheets for me to take home and walk me through the instructions, so I had the confidence to know how far to push myself without risk of reinjury. The amount of caring and follow through was extraordinary on his part as well as the PA’s.
By April 2018, I had full motion back in my shoulder, shoulder pain was something in the past, and my strength was probably about half of where it was before the injury. I know the exercises that I must do to continue building my shoulder strength. I will keep working at it until I get there.
To put my experience with Dr. Verma and his team into a perspective, I had two other acquaintances that also had rotator cuff surgery that same week as me with different doctors and hospitals. My outcome was dramatically better than either of them. There can obviously be lots of explanations for different outcomes. I’m just so glad that my surgery went as well as it did under Dr. Verma.
