Robert Lancia, District 16 State Representative from Cranston, is getting back on the road after being sidelined for the month of November due to a torn rotator cuff.

Now, he’s walking door-to-door, hoping to hit 2,500 houses in Cranston and collect signatures for a campaign against taxpayer funding for a Pawsox stadium in Rhode Island, which he can present to state legislators.

But he hit a major snag this past summer when he had surgery on his right shoulder. He said that his shoulder had been originally shattered during about 15 years ago in a freak accident while he was the Marine Chaplain at Camp Lejeun, where he himself served on active duty.

He had a prosthetic shoulder since that accident, and this past summer it was bothering him. The doctors took the head off the prosthesis, Lancia said, and the ligaments were all torn and there was a golf-ball sized ball in the front and back of it. So he needed surgery.

“It was a five hour surgery, two pints of blood, a total re-do of all the attachments,” he said of the Aug. 4 procedure. “They had to gut me like a fish.”

Lancia was then in a sling for a month and was in the process of rehabbing the shoulder when, to make matters even worse, he suffered a torn rotator cuff during physical therapy.

 He’s been in another sling since Nov. 1 and won’t get it off until the end of December. But he’s now feeling well enough to continue his campaign against the Pawsox proposal.

“I was up to 602 houses and 176 signatures when I had to have this second surgery,” he said. “Now I’m getting back out there to finish this year strong.”

He said that his overarching focus as a representative is on the financial and budgetary issues concerning Rhode Island, which is why he doesn’t want to see Rhode Islanders have to pay for a Pawsox stadium. He referenced the Convention Center Project, which he said has been costing Rhode Island $20 to $30 million a year for the past twenty years.

“I didn’t want to see the same situation with the Pawsox,” he said. “People appreciate the fact that someone is watching the dollars and cents.”

There have been a plentitude of arguments made in favor of the Pawsox building a new stadium in Rhode Island and a deal in Pawtucket does seem imminent. Lancia believes that the state is making the wrong decision and he hopes to dissuade them before an official decision is made.

Also in his current door-to-door campaign Lancia’s been passing out his Fall newsletter, which outlines the legislation he has introduced so far in office, since 2014.