Shoulder progress

[bill_schubert]

It has been a month and I'm probably 60% down the road to complete recovery.  My expectation is I'll get 90% and it will hold for a long time.  That has been my previous experience.  That last 10% takes a year and shows itself as an occasional twinge and more tiredness than usual.  

But I can tie back my hair reaching behind my head, barely, without too much pain.  I don't mind the pain so much but it is an indication in this case of something attached to the new metal not ready to be bent that way and I don't want to tear anything.  So I've got limitations.  About 90 degrees of elevation of my arm and not too much strength.  But no pain meds and I just have to be careful.  

I've got a bunch of exercises that are pretty light weight so not to cause problems.  We're making progress and I don't have to wear the sling unless I want to.  Sometimes the shoulder gets tired and the sling feels good for a bit.

All in all I'm thrilled with the whole thing.  I've got a meet with the Dr on 8 Dec for an x-ray and looksee.  

And I've got some Scaraway bandaids coming from Amazon.  I'm pretty sure this will disappear entirely in the next year.  It is already healing well.  I have to massage it to keep the scar tissue from building up, something to do while watching TV.

Comments

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

That's a pretty fantastic recovery! Woohoo! Please continue to avoid situations like my hairdresser's partner managing to fall downstairs the week after his knee replacement.

[bill-schubert.livejournal.com]

No, no. We're going to skip that portion of the recovery. I'm aggressive about doing things but know my limitations.

Seven months after getting my knee replaced, long after the therapy was done, I walked outside during the big snow storm and slipped on the ice. I had my left leg, the one with the knee replacement, under me still and it bent to full bend so my heel was on my ass. It was a scary moment and I thought I'd done some real damage. But I came back in and iced it down and massaged it. The joint swelled a bit but then went down and has been fine ever since. I probably gained some extra bend as a result but would not recommend it. Very fortunate especially since no ambulance could have gotten to us for at least a day.

[msconduct.livejournal.com]

Shudder! I have nothing but admiration for people who have to deal with icy environments. I was in New York for the blizzard of January 1996, and it was my first experience of having to negotiate icy pavements aka sidewalks. Argh! As I was slipping back and forth I was thinking "How does anyone survive this on a regular basis?"