i'm baaa-aack

[fez]

non union fracture right scaphoid (surgery 2/21)
torn labrum left shoulder
probable torn labrum right shoulder (MRI 2/20)

i wanted the doc to do the right shoulder and scaphoid at the same time but he didnt want to keep me knocked out that long. so right shoulder (it is less stable and hurts more than left) is going to be 6 to 10 wks after wrist. 6 if they screw the bone back together, 10 if they have to pin it (the pins usually come out 10 wks post-op, can pull pins and do the shoulder at the same time).

hopefully i dont miss too much of fly fishing and motorcycling season.

so i guess i'm here to keep Freak of Snow company.

[FreakofSnow]

Damn smokey! Sounds like you and I will be hanging around this hood for a while. A few nights ago I told myself that I would limit myself to only cruising Gimp Central, staying out of the main forum (to limit the amount of times I kick myself in the head).

Go ahead, ask me how thats going.

Heal up brotha

[fez]

ha, i;d have to guess its not going too well.

yeah, i crashed last summer and the wrist has been giving me trouble for a while now. i broke the same bone when i was in college. doc isnt completely sure if it ever even healed then.

the shoulders have been going on for a while now. mulitple dislocations of both.

i was sorry to hear about your knee, get after it, i can barely tell which one i messed up a couple years ago.

[seldon]

sorry to hear that fez. shoulders suck.

[fez]

well alright, had the shoulder xrays and MRI today. the kind where they fill the joint up with fluid so they can get better resolution. its kind of cool, watching the radiologist slide the needle in and filing the joint up with contrasting fluid. then a half hour in the tube listening to music. over all not bad, but afterwards it feels like something is pushing the shoulder out of the socket (if my shoulder didnt come out easy, they wouldnt be taking an MRI). so thats kind of disconcerting.

next up, wrist surgery on thursday.

[Vinman]

that's called MRI arthrogram and basically thay are looking to see the places where the contrast leaks out. It does make shoulder much easier to read.

Good luck with surgery. Are they doing a Herbert screw fix?

[fez]

i guess. the plan is to take a bone graft out of my radius and scrape out the two pieces of the scaphoid then put the bone graft in the middle and screw the whole mess back together.

the doc says there is a chance he wont be able to screw it back together but may have to pin it. there is some degeneration of the bone. i waited a few months thinking, well hoping, it was just a sprain before i saw the doc. i also broke the same bone ~20 yrs ago. the doc isnt fully sure if the bone ever completely healed back then (no surgery, just 6 mos in a cast). he says there is more degeneration than he would expect for a recent break, but not as much as he would expect for one 20 yrs old.

[fez]

had the surgery this morning. feeling pretty good, but typing left handed pretty much sucks. doc said everything went well.

[TBS]

Did ya get screwed or pinned?

Either way, heal fast

[FreakofSnow]

Heal up my man! I am getting my new ACL next Friday. Got any painkiller recommendations. I'm thinking Vicodin...........

[fez]

got screwed. doc was very happy with things.

for pain meds, im on 5 mg oxycodones and 800 mg ibu. the main thing is to keep it going. dont wait til it hurts to take more. i set my cell phone alarm to go off every four hours to wake me up and pop more pills. im not in much pain now, i was popping 3 every 4 hours of the oxycodone, down to 1 now.

if they will give you the oxycodones, i highly recommend them. also, if you have a recliner, i suggest sleeping in it the first night or two. its easier to keep your foot elevated while you sleep.

plus it's safer. the first time your wife tries to hog the blanket and pulls on it when its wrapped around your foot is an eye opener.

well, actually, i screamed like a little girl.

[fez]

wrist is doing well. off the heavy pain meds and just ibu now. i get stitches out and a cast on monday.

saw the doc today about the shoulder. torn labrum and bankart repair scheduled for 4/10. he doesnt want to operate until im out of the wrist cast. says that the cast is too much of an infection risk in the OR.

[FreakofSnow]

Hope things heal up quick man. Sounds like you'll be as good as new come end of summer? Just in time for a painfree ski season I hope.

Not to hijack.....but I can't remember what you had done on the knee? What are your top 3 tips for me post surgery for a speedy recovery?

[fez]

just a straight acl. patellar autograft replacement.

my number one tip is concentrate on walking as normally as possible as quickly as possible. i was off crutches by four days post op, in pt within a week and walking without a noticable limp in probably two weeks. it took months before i could walk down a flight of stairs without taking them one at a time though.

find a good PT. the PT is easily as important as your doc (maybe even more so). find one who specializes in athletes and is perfectly willing to hurt you (not the guy who specializes in little old ladies with hip replacements and low pain thresholds). i got lucky, i went to the bozeman deaconess pt outfit at the ridge. chose it mostly for convenience (wife could work out while i do pt). they are known to not be as good for athletes (i didnt know their rep at the time).

i got some tiny little girl who was just finishing PT school at UM and seemed to enjoy making a grown man cry. she was a former competitive gymnast who understood my goals to be stronger than before. she really busted my ass. there was another guy in PT who had the same op, same doc, probably in better shape than me. he had a different pt and it took him quite a bit longer to regain the same ROM as me.