I had to laugh (nervously) at the irony that, as people were reading my lttle ditty in the WPG about my supposedly successful recovery and trip to SC Nationals in Florida, I was surreptitiously scheduling a second shoulder surgery (while working on my alliterative techniques) and I've felt guilty that I withheld this pertinent information, like I wasn't telling the whole story or was shaping the events to suit my purpose (paint myself as an heroic yet sympathetic character) and in the interest of fair and honest jounalism I owed my reader the rest of this pathos which, of course, isn't over even yet. Conveniently, Jim Matysek has provided a medium through which I can stream my conciousess, and, after living vicariously through his World Games posts and, risking being too one dimensional, only talking about my ailments, I'm going to blog myself up to date.
When a child, despite repeated efforts to subdue him, remains disruptive to his classroom you send him to the principal and so, when my ornery biceps tendon refused to calm down after initial surgery, therapy and all the other things I wrote about I sent him to special class and he now sits in a shelf mounted jar where he can't bug my shoulder classroom any more. Well, not really. I guess he got flushed but the point is it got removed, snipped, cut, sliced outta there ( I didn't need it anyway, like my appendix) and the strategy makes sense to me: Remove the offending party. Maybe not the best analogy but it worked for me and I may let my doctor use it. This, just as it sounds, is a bit more invasive with a commensurately longer recovery time than with the first procedure.
Again, the USMS discussion forum has proved a wonderful resource for support and through it I learned that Rich Abrahams, ueber swimmer in the 60-64 age group, had this same surgery in September '05, and just set several world records at the World Games 3 weeks ago. I told my Doc a patient recovery like that would look good on his resume, but he was non committal. While my psyche is buoyed be Rich's story, my mood can easily swing toward precipitous depths depending on pain, of which there is more this time around, and my stockpile of meds which is less and I worry I won't be able to save some to use recreationally later.
Not spending all my time at a pool, my image of myself as a swimmer is tenuous, fading into a misty chlorine haze and I feel curiously detached from my swimming confederates, a feeling enhanced when I look at the team picture and find myself conspicuously (for me) absent. Oh well, maybe I wasn't making as much of an impression as I'd hoped. However, be assured, I shall return to enrich and enliven the lane 2 experience hopefully by Thanksgiving, although a few kicking sets might be in order before then.
I've tried to stay as active as possible within certain parameters. Along with the litany of physical therapy exercises, which are really just range of motion things and not very cardio obviously, I did a double workout yesterday but there was bad news and good news. Bad news is the whole workout was just a stationary bike ride in the basement and walk down the street. The good news is I negative split the walk.
And so, my conscience is clear and I've told the whole story, or what there is to tell of it so far. Ahhhhhh, that felt good.
Bruce