So things haven't gone exactly to plan since my last post. Six weeks post crash came and went with me still unable to swim because of intense pain at the top of my arm recovery and it was becoming pretty clear that there was more damage than just the broken shoulder. Went in to get an MRI and although it didn't really show much, it did look as though there was some sort of tear in the Labrum. I guess this is pretty normal and you really never know exactly what the damage is until you get inside and take a look. Since it had now been almost 8 weeks since the crash with very little improvement I decided to go ahead and get the surgery scheduled and done. Thanks again to JT and Southwest Hand for all the great and timely care putting humpty-dumpty back together, hopefully for the last time. I can handle injuries when I know what is wrong, what I have to do to fix it and roughly the time frame it will take to do so, not knowing what is going on drives me NUTS!!! Time to get this shoulder fixed and on its way to a full recovery.
I went in for surgery two weeks ago today and yesterday while I was getting my stitches out got to see some of the images from the procedure. Apparently the MRI really didn't show what was going on and as it turned out I had a little tear at the top of the Labrum, a huge tear along the bottom, and just for added bonus some cartilage damage. Yes, I am a card carrying member of the "don't do anything half-assed" club!!! Thought I'd post a few pics, well just because ;))
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| Big tear |
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| Strange cutting device cleaning up tear |
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| Sewing up tear with what looks like shoelaces ;)) |
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| All better :)) |
So now I'm "Doing Time" so to speak, with 4 more weeks in my lovely and very stylish sling before being able to start moving my shoulder again and then another 6 weeks or so after that before being up to full speed. I am able to ride my trainer (oh I know you are all very jealous) and can run on the elliptical trainer so my ass is hopefully going to stay about the same size until I am back to 100%. Sad and disappointed to not be racing the front end of the season, especially the ITU Cross Worlds in Alabama, but happy to finally have everything fixed and healing. Big thanks to everyone for all your calls, emails, tweets, messages of concern and support, I feel very loved :))) Best of luck to everyone racing, I will be following from my couch, and looking forward to being back out there soon!!!
