I'm Back!

I am going to post several posts tonight to get caught up with where I am at.  It has been a rough week between my laptop crashing, 2 feet of snow and sub-zero temperatures.  Here is a little taste of what it looked like in Chicago the day after the Blizzard.

The fence back there is 4 feet tall and you can barely see the top

2/3 Update

Sorry for the delay in updating the website.  A combination of things has prvented me from doing it from my laptop crashing to a historic blizzard hitting us 2 days ago.  I will give a detailed update this weekend regrding my therapy and the new exercises I have been doing.  Thanks.

Last Night's Session / New Exercises / Sleep

Last night's session was the toughest by far.  Besides my shoulder being sore I walked out of there sore in my back, hips, thighs and abs because I was tensing all of those muscles during the session.  Beth stretched the crap out of me and she added 1 new stretch that turned out to be pretty brutal.  Now I am trying not complaining about these stretches because I know they are all part of the process...but man did it suck.  It wasn't so much pain as it was an intense tightness in the shoulder...almost to the point that I began to wonder if my arm was just going to come right off.  And yo know what, that might have been a better option at the time.  Let me tell ya...I am glad it is over.

I did get 3 new exercises to do at home and I will add photos as soon as I can find them.  All 3 are done with red resistance bands.  For the first one I grab the band,  put my elbow at my side, extend my forearm out 90 degrees from my body then take 2 decent sized side steps to my right.  I do 1 set of 10 for this.

The next exercise is essentially the same.  The only difference is I turn my body around so that the bad comes across the front of my chest first and my steps are then taken to the left.  I then follow the same instructions and do 1 set of 10.

For the third exercise I grab each end of the band with each arm while my arms are extended outward.  I then pull back in a rowing motion until my elbows are even with my sides.  I don't want to go past that neutral plane in this exercise just yet.  For this I did 2 sets of 20.  These 3 exercises are now added to my home activity.  The only difference between the actually exercise and the photo is that I stand straight up.  I do not bend my legs.

As far as sleep goes it is still a struggle.  I have not slept all the way through the night since the surgery.  Last night was actually the first night I slept in my bed the entire night since Dec 15th.  That doesn't mean that I slept the entire night...it just means I was too lazy to get up and come downstairs.  It just seems like every move I make I feel in my shoulder and I just can't get comfortable in the first place.  Eventually I will get a full night sleep...eventually.

Tonight's Home Therapy Session

Things were going fine tonight until I came to the external rotation in abduction exercise.  I gave the shoulder a really good tweak in my second set of 10 and was unable to finish the exercise.  I rested the arm for a bit and tried my wall slides and that was pretty painful so I only wound up doing one set of 10 for this just to play it safe.  Hopefully it was just a god tweak and it will feel fine in an hour or so.  Icing it down right now and praying for a good nights sleep.

Nothing To Do With A SLAP Tear

Just wanted to take a moment to say this blog has been international for a few weeks now.  Below is a list of all countries viewing my blog:

Range Of Motion Measurements

Tonight was the 3rd time I had my Range Of Motion measurements taken since my surgery and by all accounts things are going great.  The measurements have been:

SHOULDER ABDUCTION

• Initial Visit - 95 degrees
• Jan 18th - 126 degrees w/help and 123 on my own
• Jan 25th - 143 degrees w/help and 131 on my own

SHOULDER FLEXION

• Initial - 115 degrees
• Jan 18th - 152 degrees w/ help and 127 on my own
•  Jan 25th - 155 degrees w/ help and 142 on my own

SHOULDER EXTENSION

• Initial Visit - Neutral
• Jan 18th - not tested
• Jan 25th - 83 degrees

SHOULDER INTERNAL ROTATION

• Initial Visit -@45 degrees - 87 degrees
• Jan 18th - @45 degrees - 87 degrees
•                 @ 90 degrees - 78 degrees
• Jan 25th - Not Tested

 SHOULDER EXTERNAL ROTATION

• Initial Visit - To Neutral
• Jan 18th - 78 degrees
• Jan 25th - 83 degrees
  

New Exercies Added Tonight - By Far The Most Painful

Now that surgery is done and I have almost 4 weeks of physical therapy under my belt I can pretty much move my arm with some mobility to the left, right, up and down.  The only place I cannot move it is behind my back.  To give you an example of how far I can move it imagine you are wearing a pair of jeans.  Now picture your belt loops on those jeans.  Looking at the left side of your jeans you probably have one loop in the front, the next one is on the left side then the next one is probably on the back side of your left hip.  That belt loop on the back side of your hip is how far I can reach behind my back...and that is with quite a bit of pain.

Well tonight was the night that that I was introduced to the first exercise / stretch designed to improve my range of motion in that direction and let me tell you it was not fun.  It is a pulley exercise where I grab one pulley with my left arm and place that hand by the "back belt loop" area and grab the other pulley with my right hand in front of me and pull down with that hand.  What this does is cause the left hand to move up and back.  Let me just say that I was able to pull the pulley a couple of inches max.  The pain wasn't as bad as it could have been if I decided to really push it.  I took it easy because I have accidentally moved my arm in that direction before and the pain was excruciating.  That being said it was still a sharp pain with a certain tightness about it.  I did one set of 10 of these and each time I pulled down I would have to hold it for 3 seconds.  This is by far the toughest of all of the exercises I do on my own but not as tough as some of the stretches that Beth has to do to me.

Here is a photo of the exercise