Shoulder: Week 7

Honestly I have good days and bad days.  So far, today is a good day.  Slow healing makes for extreme frustration.  Doing the exercises really seems to help.  I’m quite sore after I do them but I take that as meaning those muscles aren’t very worked.  It’s not the shoulder muscle that you see on the outside (deltoid) that I’m working.  It’s the small group of rotator cuff muscles I’m focusing on.

After reading up, It seems like it’s one of the most neglected group of muscles in the body.  Only when you hurt it *cough* do you realize how important it is to keep it strengthened.  The exercises are small, trivial almost.  But you do enough of them and you get a little sore in that area and can feel those little muscles going.  I’ll never take that area for granted again.

I can’t wait to play golf again though it might be several more weeks before I feel comfortable doing it.

Shoulder Update

Well I went to the ortho yesterday.  The prognosis remains good.  X-rays show nothing wrong with me bone structure.  YAR!  He gave me some specific exercises to do for strengthening the rotator cuff.  That’s pretty much the #1 way to avoid injury to that area.

While many heavy lifters focus on how awesome their deltoids look, they often completely forget about the small group of muscles that make up the rotator cuff.  I wasn’t even really aware of how important it is.  Now I know!

Daily Update

Sorry I’m not doing these… well… daily!

I’m learning quickly that rotator cuff injuries are the devil devil devil.  These things take a long time to heal.  I’ve been working it a bit too hard the past couple of days and I’m going to give the elliptical trainer a break I think.  It just feels sore and worked.  It doesn’t feel anything like it did when I injured it.

Sadly, golf is out of the question for a while.  I really thought I’d be back into it soon but it can be particularly hard on the RC.  I’d rather take time off to get things fixed than risk prolonging this annoying condition.

So my plan for now is to run on a treadmill or *gasp* run on a real road.  I got some new trainers so they should help.  I’ll try to find out whether or not the elliptical is helping, hurting or whatnot.

It’s 3 weeks into this and I know it can take a solid month and a half or more to heal.  This is worse than when I broke my big toe in TWO places.

Day 9

Much better day today.  Went to the doctor and the rotator cuff appears to be sprained/strained ( I can’t remember exactly what he said ).  I made sure that he knew I wasn’t seeing him for ILLNESS today.  At any rate he ran a battery of simple tests on me regarding moving my arm around.  I had some mild pain here and there which indicated to him it wasn’t “serious”.  He recommended I keep the arm moving but not to put stress on it, i.e. lift weights.

The irony is I got into this position by exercising!

Well eating wasn’t the best early in the day but I straightened up by days end.  The visit to the doc helped give me a good bit of piece of mind.  My mind tends to wander and I end up imagining myself going in for extensive shoulder surgery.  Which additional treatment isn’t entirely ruled out but he says 90% of these things can clear up on their own over time with rest and care.

I hope to get back to golfing in a couple of weeks!

Day 7 & 8

I’m not going to lie, the past couple of days have sucked.  It’s mostly due to my shoulder injury.  Either a rotator cuff thing or a sprain.

I’d looked forward to a pool party for a solid few weeks and when the time came all I could do was watch my kids play.  It wasn’t a very enjoyable experience not being able to play with them or play anything else for that matter.  At least they had fun and that’s what matters most for them.  I wasn’t going to rain on their day!

I narrowed it down to what happened also.  I went to do a set of pushups and instead of kneeling down and assuming the position, I dropped to the floor in a quick motion.  I apparently dropped too fast and hit at a funny angle?  It didn’t hurt at all, it just felt “funny”.  I proceeded with my workout.  If it had REALLY hurt I wouldn’t have continued.  I’m a bit peeved that a “funny” feeling has caused me so much grief.  I’m not in agony but I’m sore and my ROM (range of motion) is limited.

From what I can tell, it’s not serious.  I can move my arm around a good bit but certain positions are unpleasant.  I also have some weakness when lifting it a certain way.  Lastly there is some popping sounds, but I also have those in the left shoulder so I dunno if they are just louder because it hurts.

I am going to the doctor this morning and I’ll get his take.  I will likely get a referral to an orthopedist and get X-rays at some point.  If X-rays don’t show anything then they usually do an MRI.  I can only guess at this point.  I’m pretty sure I’ll have to keep it immobilized for a few days which is going to kill me for a number of reasons.   Most of those reasons come in the form of two small children.  Ugh.  Well lesson learned.  Don’t be cool and remove a step from assuming your push-up position.  Kneel, then assume the position!  Thank you sir may I NOT have another!

But hey, for ONCE this year I’m going to the doctor and I’m NOT SICK!!!

Rotator cuff

Well, I did something to my rotator cuff a few days ago and it’s really pissing me off.  Usually things like this mentally derail me.  I’ll be all feeling good and doing good then bam, something goes wrong.  I’m not letting that happen this time.  I can still do plenty of exercise without over doing my shoulder movements.  So F U CUFF!  Well not really, I like the cuff.  I need it to get better.  I’ll take care of it with ice and meds and heat and more meds.

I’m going to avoid the doctor for a few days unless this does not go away.

Here’s hoping that I don’t have to go to the doctor.