To cut a long story short, my shoulder is still munted and I still can't race or train properly. I got really fed up and went back to my surgeon in April. I had an MRI and nerve conduction study in May and on the 24th of May, my wonderful surgeon said "SURGERY!".
So, I'll finally be having shoulder surgery to finally fix this insidious shoulder injury on 13th July 2012.
Yes, it's on Friday the 13th *spooky sigh*. Wah wah wah...whatever. It's actually seven years to the day since having that big old left knee reconstruction. Sadly that was a Wednesday, not a Friday.
I'll be undergoing a rotator cuff repair and bursectomy to my right shoulder. Hopefully it will be arthroscopic, but if the supraspinatus tear 1cm from the insertion is really big (i.e. bigger than the 80% the surgeon suspects because the bursa is hiding some of the damage), I'll be getting a big old incision of 3-4 inches. Thank goodness I haven't got that black widow spider tattoo yet, because that's where I was going to put it!
I'm now focusing on prepping for the surgery.
When I moved into my current house in August 2011, I set most of it up left-handed as at that stage the possibility of surgery was floated and I was panicking. I need to change the sofa around again and move my bed over another three feet but I can bribe my neighbour to do that with home baking - while I can stil bake that is.
I've bought an electric knife, long arm reacher, elastic shoelaces, paper plates and plastic cutlery, new pajamas, a poncho, a long handle loofah, an electric toothbrush, a long shoehorn and front opening bras (yep, sure you wanted to know that). I still have to buy one of those fancy self-pumping hand soap thingies and a pumpy toothpaste thingy. Vodafone offered me with a free upgrade to an iPhone 4S, which I took last month as it comes with wonderful Siri, who is going to be a godsend (along with the voice to text feature) when I'm down to one non-dominant hand, and double the memory of my previous phone.
I've got a pre-surgery exercise plan that I'm working on. I won't be able to teach Zumba for 2-3 months post-op so I'm doing as much of it as I can at present. I'm now reduced to therabands and the stationary bike, with weights only for biceps and triceps, and legs. It's boring but necessary. I'm banned from the treadmill and rower, the crosstrainer and anything overhead, above the chest or bodyweight. I'm still allowed to walk and do water running, and teach Zumba as long as I limit movements to what is still comfy. Not much is.
The list of activities the surgeon has banned me from grows longer and more illustrious by the day as I find more activities I can't do for the next 7-13 months. So far it consists of:
- treadmills
- running (was for more than 30mins, now it's no running at all)
- cycling on my own road bike
- swimming of any kind or stroke
- cross trainer
- rower
- grinder
- lat pulldowns
- seated rows (unless with a band)
- any other overhead weights (e.g. shoulder presses)
- Pull ups / chin ups
- tricep kickbacks
- upright rows
- dumbbell rows
- dips
- push ups / press ups
- crossfit
- planks
- Kettlebells
- TRX
- bodyweight exercises
- chest press / bench press
- flyes
- incline rows
- anything above the horizontal
- heavy lifting
- carrying anything of more than 1-2kg above the waist with my right arm
- holding a phone to my right ear
- writing for more than a few sentences
- rotating my right arm with weight or strain
- demonstrating exercises
- lunges in case I fall over as my balance has gone to hell in a handcart
The list of stuff I can still do is:
- Stationary bike
- bicep curls
- tricep pulldowns
- theraband rows
- theraband cuff rotations
- walking
- aqua jogging
- Zumba (within reason)
