As many of you know, I have been periodically dislocating my right shoulder since I was 12. It's popped out of the socket probably a half dozen times, and it almost always happens on a tennis court when I try to serve.
Last summer, Chris and I started taking private tennis lessons with super-awesome Coach Rick at the Sunnyvale Tennis Center, and we were having a great time, making great progress especially on ground strokes and volleys. But at some point, we had to start working on serves, and unfortunately, I dislocated it again. Poo. Now, this is the most painful thing I've ever experienced, and it took a long time to slide back in this time. In fact, we'd given up and were on our way to the ER when we drove over a big speed bump that jarred it gruesomely back into place.
So I did some research and found that there's an 80% chance that I would re-dislocate it, even with physical therapy and strengthening exercises. This, of course, sounds totally believable considering my history. I eventually got an MRI, which showed that there was a tear in the labrum, making it much easier for the arm to slip out of the socket. My doctor, Dr. Theodore Bucklin, was nice enough to let me have a CD of the MRI images, and hopefully I can share those at some point. He recommended arthroscopic surgery to repair it. It's called a Bankart repair.
Well, today is the 10th day since I had the surgery, and I'm happy to say that things seem to be going well! I took the sling off, just one day after the surgery, and I could bend my arm at the elbow and let the arm "dangle" limply from the socket. (Yeah, incredible feat of athleticism, go Jenn. Woohoo.)
On Thursday, I started physical therapy, and I got a bunch more exercises to do. There's the "pendulum" where I do more aggressive dangling -- this one's easy. Then there's the one where I use my good arm to lift the bad arm to 90 degrees, straight in front of me, parallel to the ground if I'm standing. That one's pretty easy too, although it gets painful if I haven't taken enough painkillers and there's a lot of swelling.
The REAL bitch is the "external rotation" exercise. Think of the sort of rotation that happens when you're arm wrestling and you're losing. Now, that's uncomfortable even in normal circumstances, but my goal is to make it to a piddly 30 degrees in the next six weeks. (That's 30 degrees from *vertical*, btw.) Sadly, even if I push really hard, I can only make it to 10 degrees, on a *good* day. I guess this is not terrible progress considering how I couldn't even get *vertical* on the first day of therapy. But I have such a long way to go...sigh.
On the brighter side, as a birthday present, I realized I could type with both hands again!! I'm pretty excited about this. One-handed typing is sooooo awful. But Chris is being super nice and helpful. He makes all sorts of yummy food and I'm apparently off the hook for all the chores (yesss!). (Thaaaaank you Chris!)
Hopefully I can just stay motivated enough to keep up with these exercises. I'm watching the Australian Open raptly as an extra reminder of how good it's gonna be when I get my arm back.
Well. Okay. Not that good. But a little closer. :-)
Next milestone: Sutures come out on Thursday!
5 comments:
I'm only 9 months out from that same surgery. I'm surprised they're letting you do any external rotation. I was under strict orders not to go past "straight ahead" until the 7th week. But, as long as your doctor is OK with that, so do what you can. Physical therapy after the 6th week will start making tons of progress, you'll never be happier being able to raise your arm over your head!
That's interesting to know. Unlike the other exercises, the external rotation is fairly painful. It sort of feels like I'm aggressively stretching a muscle that's been pulled. Not comfortable at all.
I looked around online and there seemed to be a lot of contradicting recipes for rehab. Some are very similar to what you just described -- little to no physical therapy for 6 weeks. But I also saw several that were less conservative and suggested that one could start external rotation within the first couple weeks (although none were as aggressive as 30 degrees -- 20 degrees was the max).
I also found this interesting article about accelerated versus traditional rehab.
It seems to conclude that the final result will be the same in both groups of people, but that the accelerated rehab is less annoying?
The lesson that I'm taking from all this is that it's probably unnecessarily risky to be pushing it all the way to 30 degrees immediately if it hurts so much. I'll definitely check with my doctor again when I get the sutures out. Thanks for the note!
Maybe you just need this:
http://www.gaiastore.com/servlet/Detail?no=221
Ha, that's awesome.
Bankart lesions or tears can occasionally cause recurrent shoulder dislocations, which may be due to that further damage to different areas of the shoulder. For those who continue to experience disorders, Bankart repair surgery is often a good choice.
A Bankart repair is an operation for habitual anterior shoulder dislocation. The joint capsule is sewed to the detached glenoid labrum, without duplication of the subscapularis tendon.
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