Sorry to hear this and I wish him well. I'll try to give you a summarized version of my son's situation and hopefully it will provide some light at the end of the tunnel (the long version can be found here). Everyone's journey is different, of course, and your son's injury is more severe than my son's, but the surgery and rehab process is likely very similar. My son, who is also a catcher, graduates from HS this year and tore his labrum sometime last summer. I say "sometime" because we don't know exactly when it happened but the pain started about the third to the last game of his HS season. First MRI (June) did not show a tear and he was diagnosed with an impingement for which rest, ice, etc. was prescribed. In a couple of weeks there was no change so PT was prescribed. Still no improvement so we asked for another MRI and, lo and behold, there was a tear in the labrum along with some other "housecleaning" that needed attention. So, frustratingly, he went all summer without playing at a very critical time in the recruiting timeline only to be presented with the choice of having surgery at the end of last August. He chose to have the surgery knowing that there is a good chance he may not make a recovery. In his mind he didn't want to look back and think that he didn't try everything possible. The tear was actually a bit worse than the scan showed so two anchors/sutures, and about an hour and a half, later he was ready to start the road to recovery. It has been a long road and he's still on it. Your son must follow the initial recovery and ongoing PT plan to a T. I can't stress this enough. Setbacks will be normal but he absolutely cannot be in a rush. This will likely be a 12-14 month deal for a full return, and I've heard longer in some situations, and some that don't make it back to 100%. He will probably become very in tune with his body and what it's telling him. Weirdly so to those of us who haven't been through a surgery this invasive but it taught me to listen to my son when he says something about feel and motion. There's also a chance that he'll want to baby it, sometimes more than necessary. This is also a normal reaction to not wanting to do something that will prolong recovery or risk re-injury. There's a fine line that only your son can know because there is some pain, soreness, and discomfort to be expected. He'll learn to know the difference but my son's ortho told him that if you go too far forward there's no way to go back so he'll need to be careful.
Fast forward to today (nearly nine months post-op) and my son has made huge strides towards full recovery. He caught all but a few games of his HS season albeit not throwing at all the first few, and not ever reaching 100% effort. Despite that, he committed to his D3 of choice and had a pretty decent season being awarded all-conference (in the largest enrollment class in the state) and all-state all-star, which I believe is a deal for seniors only. He hit somewhere north of .320, had a perfect fielding percentage, and threw out close to 30% of would-be base stealers having never reached much over 85% throwing effort. HS stats are what they are, so take that with a grain of salt, but this is much more than we could have ever hoped for given the circumstances. He is still doing PT three times a week and is now focused almost solely on the strength aspect of that. He will continue this through the summer, focus on overall strength and conditioning, catching-specific skill work, and hitting, and hopefully be ready to compete for playing time at 100% come fall.
I hope this provides a ray of hope and if you've got any specific questions that you think I can answer I'm more than happy to field those either here or in a PM. Best of luck!
