Pin Eeyore's Arm Back On

[Christine Grice]

Hey Steve! How's that bottle of tequila treating you....

oops, I mean, hows the recovery going???

[Steve Ekstrand]

Going okay I guess. Stiches out tomorrow morning and I'll get to find out what really happened. Doctor had a trauma emergency so he ducked out to the hospital and I never got to see him after.

I ran out of my vicodin tolerance by Monday night, so its been a little painful without painkillers. I left the Patron bottle closed. I can't kick the cold... So, I keep having coughing fits... That hurts... ALOT!!! Other than putting a shirt on or taking one off. Coughing is the bane of my existence.... Doctor could give me vicodin cough syrup..... I didn't bother.

I'm hoping tomorrow I get a clear plan on PT. But it look like things will be in pretty decent shape for the West Coast swing in March. Hopefully I will be able to drive the CASOC event.

[Steve Ekstrand]

Doctor says I should be able to drive the January event. I'm be worse off than I was in November. But no danger to the shoulder. Got the stitches out and got to toss the sling. I'm free to use the arm as long as I don't lift anything beyond a few lbs or really abuse it. I start therapy in a week, and I'm doing passive exercises now to loosen the shoulder/arm up. Those are painful, but necessary. The shoulder likes to lock up. Right now I can't raise my arm beyond just short of straight out without support. Its pretty weak and pretty tight. But all this is hugely better than what was expected if the bone grafts had been necessary. The pics were pretty cool.

I had a piece of tissue that broke away and that was floating in the rotator cuff that was about 6mm. That is HUGENORMOUS for that tight space. Like trying to run with a pea sized rock in your shoe. That was the major pain generator. Also, since that was pushing my arm up I developed a pretty sharp bone spur. The tendon was only 25% torn, still pretty inflamed and bleeding. But strong enough that fully seperating and grafting didn't make sense. So, that tendon will always be 75% of the others. But it should be enough, he said it looked good and should calm down and heal with the 6mm object not pushing the arm bone up and putting tension on that lower tendon. They removed the object, ground away the bone spur. Did some bone clearancing to slightly reshape my cuff since the arm bone will probably always ride a little higher. Its now centered in its new home. All cleaned up and the only real issue now is regaining the range of motion and all the lost strength. That will take a year or more. But just 40-60% strength and good range of motion should be enough to drive just fine and that will only take a couple of months now. Plan is to drive in Jan not expecting much, but hoping by Feb 1st I won't be slowed down any by it.

Looking good! Thanks for the kind words, thoughts, prayers, and calls.