Shoulder Surgery – 17 weeks in

Light barbell weights

Light bar bell weights - For shoulder surgery patients you should be staying under 5 lbs during aerobics to avoid injury.

Last time I updated you on my shoulder surgery (recovery from right shoulder Open Bankart Surgery), I told you my insurance company cut off my physical therapy visits citing near complete relief of symptoms. I checked with my surgeon and he told me to wait until my visit today when we could evaluate the situation. He ran me through a range of motion test (upward reach, behind back reach, outward reach, and outward rotation). He agreed my outward motion was about only 90% recovered, but because there was no pain in full assisted extension he let me know that is okay. He thus told me that my shoulder was both stabilized and 100% healed from surgery.

My surgeon told I can come back if I have any other issues, but otherwise no follow up visit is needed. He also noted since my left arm had gone without dislocation for over two months it too was healed. He did check my left arm’s range motion and let me know surgery would not help in that situation as there was no actual loss of stability or permanent tear in the tissue.

Instead he recommended I join a gym or start doing light aerobics with light weight lifting on both arms. He noted that using the same exercises at PT on both shoulders would long term strengthen and stabilize the joint. Motions should be inward in nature and kept under five pounds during work outs. He advised against heavy weight training and any exercises that would increase elasticity in the muscle. He said my condition was genetic in nature and quite common as far as joint structure defects go. Other than that, I am officially recovered. I’m about ten weeks ahead of schedule and more fully healed than was expected. Both items are good news and it looks like in the long term I made the right decision– though I won’t lie that first month was horrible.

This ends my log of shoulder surgery recovery. I know many of you have been checking in and reading. I hope for those of you going through shoulder surgery this helped you understand what to both expect and what you have to look forward to. Many Open Bankart surgery patients need up to six months to fully heal (that’s 27 weeks) and in my case I had a quick recovery. If you’re not healing as quickly as I did do not get discouraged. You will see the same results, but I will tell you my secret was never giving up on PT and always working through intense pain. This is the only way you will ever recover.

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Shoulder Surgery – 13 weeks in

Don't be fooled... healthcare is far from a non-profit industry!

Don't be fooled... healthcare is far from a non-profit industry!

Last post I talked about how my recovery from Open Bankart Surgery on my right shoulder had begun to focus on pure strength training and continued development of my outward flexibility. This routine was exactly the same for week thirteen except that my physical therapist (PT) increased my weight by one pound on each exercise. This made it overall much harder to do, but I got through it. I also cut back to two visits for the week. The pure intensity of the work outs require at least a day to recover and I find with the long weekend in between the sessions I recover more fully so as not impede forward progress. When I went to return for my second two visits to head into week fourteen I was told that my insurance company said my progress was adequate for the treatment and that I no longer needed PT. As such, they would pay for no more PT sessions.

With that I’m waiting to talk with my orthopedic surgery (hopefully tomorrow) to discuss this further. I’m not so sure this is the case. While I have regained about 75% of my capabilities I’m nowhere near being able to perform high impact sports or able to lift over thirty pounds. I also managed to get to an external rotation of 72 degrees. This is still short of 90% of the full 90 degrees that we wanted and thus there is no way I don’t need further treatment.

We’ll see how the appeal process goes, but with cost consolidation being the way of modern corporate America courtesy of the never ending recession none of this surprises me. Of course, it is disheartening to see one’s health care now comes under such scrutiny where close enough is considered fully recovered– not good news. Glad I didn’t get open heart surgery… I can only imagine how that would have been. It’s beating so that’s close enough for us!

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Alive… recovering

I am indeed alive and getting better every day. Surgery ending up being more invasive than thought. I needed a rebuild of 25% of my right shoulder and ended up staying in the hospital overnight. Still very limited in my ability to move and still lots of pain/soreness now 6 days later. Going to be at least 5 more weeks until I’m back where I was before surgery. Expect updates to be sparse over next two weeks, but I am both alive and slowly but surely getting better everyday.

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Surgery Scheduled

shoulder-joint-ligamentsVisited my orthopedist today. Looks like 10/14/09 will be the day of my surgery. I have a rip in the area marked to the right as the articular capsule (#2), which creates instability in the head of my humerus (the bone that makes the top portion of your arm) and allows it to pass out of the shoulder socket. We discussed therapy, but honestly with this being an ongoing issue for some four plus years my orthopedist doubts there will be any success with that sort of treatment. If it was going to heal– it would have healed already.

The good news is the surgery is pretty non-evasive and is performed in a same day surgery manner. I literally will leave the hospital a few hours after post-operation. The whole operation should be rather quick and recovery time is six to twelve weeks including therapy. That puts me at 100% by Christmas, which is nice.

Until then I will have to wear a sling for the first few weeks and limit my motion though I was told I could use a mouse within 48 hours for brief sessions (yes– I asked how long until I can blog again because I’m that much of nerd).

The success rate is pretty high and my biggest enemy would be infection. With all the pain I’ve been through over the last few years I am glad that the worst of it will be over within two months or so. I also look forward to being able to do normal things such as pick up my youngest daughter or play catch with my oldest daughter. Those thoughts alone are both keeping me focused and driven to seeing this through.

I appreciate all your kind words and thank those of you who have been sending me get well wishes through Facebook. Your thoughts and wishes are appreciated.

If I can pull it off, I’d like to squeeze out one Pirate Radio before surgery and then follow up with another show as soon as I’m feeling well enough to do so in what will most likely be early November. I’ll let you know as those plans begin to gel and be sure to keep you in the loop.

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