A fortnight until my total and I have no idea what to actually sort out at home first

New here. My right shoulder (my working arm, I throw pots) is being replaced in a fortnight and the hospital has given me a leaflet about the operation and nothing whatsoever about the fortnight afterwards.

I live on my own. That is the bit I keep circling. My daughter can come for a few days and then she has to go back, and after that it is me, one arm, a flat full of things on high shelves and a studio I am obviously not going near. I have read the recovery pages so I know roughly what the sling weeks look like medically. What I do not know is the boring practical stuff. What did you actually change or buy before you went in that turned out to matter, and what did you spend money on that you never touched?

Also, and this is possibly a daft one, how did people manage getting dressed? Everything I own goes over my head.

Not daft at all, it was the single thing that caught me out. Loose shirts that button up the front, and you put the bad arm in first, always. Anything over the head is out for weeks. I bought two shirts a size up and lived in them and my daughter took a bag of jumpers back to hers so I would stop staring at them resentfully.

Other thing from me: get everything you use every day down to worktop height before you go in. Kettle, mugs, tea, cereal, tablets, the lot. I did about half of that and spent a fortnight discovering the other half the hard way.

Slip on shoes. I cannot stress this enough. Laces with one hand are a genuine ordeal and I sat on the stairs defeated by a pair of boots on about day four.

Food wise I froze a load of portions beforehand and it was the best thing I did. One handed cooking is slow and it makes you tired in a way you would not expect for something so unathletic.

Margaret, welcome, and this is the thread I wish had existed before my own reverse, because I did exactly the opposite. I read everything about the surgery and nothing about the fortnight after it, and I came home to a house arranged for a man with two working arms.

The practical list the others have given is the right one and I would add three things. First, sort your sleeping arrangement before you go in, not at two in the morning on day one. Most people spend the early weeks propped up rather than flat, whether that is a pile of pillows, a foam wedge or a recliner, and it is worth testing which one you can actually get in and out of while you still have two arms. Second, arrange your lifts now. You are unlikely to be driving until around six weeks, and physio appointments start well before that. Third, clear the floor of anything you could trip on, because a fall onto a new replacement is the one accident everyone should be actively avoiding.

On the one handed side, practise now with your left hand while there is no pressure. Brushing teeth, tea, cutlery. It feels ridiculous and it saves you a fortnight of fumbling. Since you live alone I would also be blunt with the team at your pre op assessment about exactly that, because it can change what support they arrange for discharge. We have put the whole list together in preparing for shoulder replacement surgery, including the questions worth settling before the day, and if the nights are what worry you, sleeping after a replacement is the honest version.

This is enormously helpful, thank you. Shirts ordered, freezer filling up, and I have moved the kettle and the mugs down which already feels like living in a slightly odd flat.

The one I had not thought about at all was the lifts. I had vaguely assumed I would be driving again after a few weeks and would just get myself to physio. Six weeks is a lot of lifts to ask people for and I would much rather ask now than the night before.

One nobody has mentioned. Sort out how you are going to wash properly. A cheap plastic stool in the shower made an enormous difference to me and it was about a tenner. Standing up, one armed, trying not to get a dressing wet, while still fairly wobbly on painkillers, is a lot more of a job than it sounds when you are reading about it beforehand.

Back to report, three weeks post op. Stool, shirts, frozen meals and the pillow mountain all earned their keep. The grabber thing I bought on a whim has been used once, for a sock.

The thing I got wrong was underestimating how tired the whole business would make me. Not the arm, just the general flatness of it. If anyone is reading this before their own operation, budget for that as well as for the shelves.