The Blog at Randall Cook Studios

I should also report that I have had a rather disconcerting bit of news with my shoulder. I have been faithfully attending and performing all the physical therapy exercises that my therapist gave me. She was increasing the weight I was doing, the number of repetitions and the variety of exercises. All was going well and I was getting to the point where I could see the light at the end of the tunnel with a return to normal life and quilting. Then it all came crashing down on September 12 when my shoulder suddenly started grinding and grating and then I had pain with movements that didn’t have pain previously. As I wanted to move toward a sports program and leave the rehab program I was getting ready to ask for a new therapist anyway, so I asked my surgeon for the best and made the switch.

After 4 days of worrying that I re-tore the shoulder and would require another surgery, I finally met with the new therapist on 9/17. He is G-R-E-A-T. Whereas we still do not know whether I will need another surgery, I definitely feel I am in the right hands now. He noticed that several things in my shoulder were not moving mechanically correctly (the last therapist didn’t) and has diagnosed me with Shoulder Impingement Syndrome. He has me scaled back to just a few exercises to try to correct the underlying issues. I am very frustrated that I have spent a couple of months of therapy, under weekly observation that was actually causing me harm. I am desperately hoping the new therapist is right and that I don’t need another surgery, but I have this nagging feeling that all is not well in the state of Denmark.

It has been a L-O-N-G time since my last post, and much has happened so I think I will break this into smaller chunks and multiple postings. The biggest news is that I have had major shoulder surgery that has kept me from quilting and art for some time.

My last post mentioned my vacation at the end of February and early March. What I didn’t mention was that I was being stupid on that trip, and being a “gym rat” that hadn’t been getting weightlifting sessions in, I pushed it while on vacation and I lifted heavy weights 5 days in a row. The last day I had a small incident while doing incline dumbbell presses and my shoulder slipped. I didn’t think much of it, but did remember it. I thought it was just a small pull and I returned to normal life. It never got better, and in fact got much worse for a while, with me not being able to use my right arm at all for a while. I went to an orthopedist after about 8 weeks, and he suggested immobilizing the arm and giving it another 6 weeks. Still not better. So I went for an MRI (that cost me $900) and that showed that I had a tear in my labrum, the cartilage that lines the shoulder socket. Surgery was scheduled but we expected a small tear as by this time I was fairly high functioning and using my arm almost normally. It turned out that I had a severe tear.

If you think about the shoulder socket as a pear shaped clock, the labrum was torn away from the bone from 2 o’clock around the bottom to 8 o’clock. The surgeon put 6 anchors (screw like things) through the socket into the bone, and sutured the socket capsule with “fiber wire” and performed a repair to reshape the lip of the labrum (I won’t tell you how much that all cost).

And home I came. I am a pretty hard person to keep down and hate to admit any limitations so this process has been hard for me. When I first got home, I was pacing the house, still feeling no pain due to a regional nerve block. That night as the block wore off I was in agony. I took 12 Percocet in the first 12 hours (BTW, that was a lot in case you were wondering). And I was taking them as half pills, every 30 minutes. I spent those 12 hours just moaning.

Luckily, I have some great people in my life. My partner was wonderful throughout. As I was being discharged from surgery, they told me I would be most comfortable sleeping in a recliner. Of course I don’t have a recliner. My friend Wayne showed up with a recliner for me to use and it was a lifesaver. I slept in that recliner for over 3 weeks, and could not have imagined making it through without it. I gradually progressed to sleeping in bed with an incline wedge under me and lots of pillows to support the shoulder. Friends brought me food, dropped by for visits and when I was more mobile they came to get me and take me out and about. I had a friend bring me a continual cold pack to use. We called it “Mr. Freeze” and it was basically a small cooler, like the kind you might put beer in, which you filled with ice and then water and it pumped iced water through a pack that you put on the shoulder.

I spent 4 weeks in a sling, and have been working diligently ever since to regain both strength and range of motion. I am pretty diligent in putting in about 2 hours of physical therapy a day and all appears to be on track. It is a long road to recovery from this. The good news is I think I am almost able to return to quilting.