Good luck man!
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Thanks everyone! I’m awake.
I woke up in recovery around 8:40 this morning. I’m home and just woke up from my nap. It’s 11:45 now. I struggled to knock the cobwebs out of my head.
The doctor told my wife that the biceps tendon moved out of the groove further than he thought when he manipulated my arm. He is glad that we did the procedure to correct that. My labrum showed some fraying and he cleaned that up. My rotator cuff muscles were unaffected by the injury.
It sounds like everything went according to plan and hopefully I will be released to get back to my normal life at the end of August or beginning of September.
I found out yesterday that my light duty assignment at work will be in our Professional Standards Bureau. That sounds like a bad gig but I know I will learn a lot from it. I guess they need help looking into complaints against officers. I don’t think I will have anything to do with a full-blown investigation, but I will be looking into the initial complaints and trying to figure out if there is any validity to them.
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Glad to read than J.
Time to relax a little and let the body do it’s stuff.
That new assignment does sound a bit meh. Is it like an internal affair stuff?
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Yep. Internal Affairs has been renamed Professional Standards by most agencies here.
My department will look into every complaint. When I was a Trooper they’d only investigate a complaint if the person was willing to complete and sign the form. Most wouldn’t so that was the end of it.
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This is a great way to look at this. Everything is a learning opportunity and a chance to see things from a different point of view.
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Sounds like a successful surgery! Always nice when the Dr goes the extra mile.
Here’s to a speedy and strong recovery!
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Well, it’s been quite the day. My food for the day was:
- two chocolate pudding snack packs, Sprite, and Graham crackers immediately post-op
- two sleeves of Ritz crackers, two pieces off toast, and ginger ale throughout the day
- and finally some protein in the evening from a chicken wrap and protein bar
I battled nausea off and on this afternoon. I tried to sleep but every time I’d dose off, something would wake me up. Two of those times was delivery people dropping off stuff. Why do they ring the doorbell!?
Hopefully I’ll get some sleep tonight.
My pain is pretty good but I think that’s because he gave me a suprascapular nerve block. I don’t know how long that will hang around but I’m enjoying it. My only pain/discomfort is in my tricep near the elbow. My upper arm is swollen and looks weird.
The only thing I know about my recovery right now is that I’m in this sling for eight weeks and I’m not supposed to do any active elbow flexion for six weeks. This is going to be a long recovery…
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Sounds like it went to plan and now the recovery can begin. Glad you OK and looking forward to following along with your recovery plan and your journey back to awesome.
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Glad to hear the surgery went well!
Post-op nausea is rough. Plus, your body’s literally rebuilding itself, so eat what you can, when you can. Training and physique goals will return quicker when you’re healed!
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6.6.19
I slept on the couch and woke up at 0500 for no reason. I’ll try to weigh myself later but there’s no need to wake up my wife by fumbling around in the bathroom attached to our room.
Edit: weighed 218 lbs. Damn, I sure shot up to the upper limit of my acceptable weight range in a hurry. Months of cutting and half of it is gone after a week of bad eating (I was 215 before surgery).
I’m surviving on 1/2 of a percocet 10 every 6-8 hrs for now. Hopefully that’s all I need. The worst thing I’m experiencing is the sound of fluid sloshing around in my shoulder. It’s gross.
I’m just worried about eating too much. Today will be a normal day of eating. I feel like the nausea is gone. That means I need to pay attention to my food instead of just eating/drinking sugar all day.
That’s crazy… if you’ve got enough fluid to slosh that will explain a portion of the weight gain. I wouldn’t sweat it. Use this time to heal up and refresh. You’ll be back at it in no time!
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Just knocked out about 80 reps with each leg on step-ups and lunges. Obviously, I just used body weight and stopped at 10 reps per set so I didn’t exert myself too much.
I’m hot and needed to take my shirt off so I snapped a photo of my swollen arm.
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Glad to see your following the 8 weeks in a sling rule! 
I get to straighten my arm on occasion. Imagine what eight weeks of keeping my elbow at 90* would do to me.
I have PT at 10 tomorrow. I’m excited. I’m already getting cabin fever.
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I had a really bad wrist break as a teenager. I spent 16 weeks in a long arm cast. I couldn’t straighten my elbow to 180 for almost a year afterwards. No fun at all. Worst part was I would unknowingly be holding my arm bent at the elbow with a limp wrist. Didn’t get teased about that at all…
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With all this down time, I can’t help but think about my training.
I dedicate a lot of time and thought to the gym - maybe too much. I can’t help but wonder if I need to pursue other hobbies. I don’t need to stop training, but maybe I don’t need to train so much.
The discussion in Paul’s thread has made me evaluate my training and goals. The concept of more not being better definitely stands out. Paul has been sharing some of his own training sessions and they seem to be extremely short. That has my wheels turning.
If a few exercises done for a few sets is enough for him then would it be enough for me? I think maintaining muscle takes less work than building it, so maybe that’s what he’s doing.
I’m not exactly satisfied with my physique, but I’ve dedicated a lot of hours to the gym to basically not change at all over the past few years. Sure, my body has changed over that time but it’s basically been a cycle of gaining and losing weight - both intentionally and accidentally.
I’m wondering if I could lift three days a week with a full body program and maintain what I have or even progress. Maybe I’d benefit from an ultra simple program with few exercises so I could closely follow a progression of some sort.
This “what if” workout would be like this:
- DB Incline
- Row
- Lateral Raises or OHP
- Pull Down
- RFESS or lunges
Reps would be a double progression or some sort of set to failure like 350 sets or double rest/pause.
I think I could knock these sessions out in 45 minutes or less.
I might try this out during my recovery. I’d train MWF and have PT on Tues and Thurs.
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Give it a shot man, maybe it’d be cool to rotate the methods throughout the week for the lifts. Using just one lift for example: DB Incline M: double prog, W: 350, F: double r/p.
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This was posted in the over 40 lifters article, which I of course read twice… I’m stubborn so I’ll keep my 531 program, but I might cut it down even more.
That’s one approach. I was thinking about using the same method for several weeks - I guess you could call it a cycle.
I also like too many lifts. I’d probably do different stuff on each of the three days to make sure I hit all my favorites.
I really have nothing to lose during this time.
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Do it. Full body is great. Superset the whole thing. If you want to push a lift one day, set the others at maintenance pounds that day. There’s so much you can do with full body.
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