I have a full thickness tear of my supraspinatus, arthritis of the acromioclavicular joint and possible/probable tear of the subscapularis and glenoid labrum. Maybe also dinked up my long head the bicep tendon near the origin. So they have been wanting to do surgery a few years on it. Like a typical meathead i keep lifting.
I hear some people who have shoulder surgery who are back to lifting within a few weeks. I doubt most need as much junk as I am supposed to have done - anyone have an idea how long before I can move it well and how long before I can lift lightly and how long before I can lift heavily???
First off everyone is different. Can relate my experience. Had to look up supraspinatus, looks like a small muscle of the rotator cuff. The glenoid labrum and bicep tendon would be called a SLAP tear (superior labrun anterior posterior tear, there are 4 levels). I had a L2 SLAP repair, along with cleaning up slight tearing of my rotator cuff at the end of September. The doctor had me at PT in a week and after 2 months, I can do any upper body movement I want to as long as I use a weight were I can get 15 reps. Reason for this is the labrum is doesn’t have much blood flow and it takes a while to heal. You want to avoid any sudden or jerking movements so you don’t mess up the repair. I go back at the end of the 3rd month after surgery and the doctor said that if things are going okay I don’t have to get it rechecked and can do heavy weights that don’t involve a jerking action (would like to wait 5-6 months for that). Some friends have sons that also had SLAP tears around the same time, they are on a similar schedule. My tear did not involve the bicep tendon, so that may make a difference as well as how involved the rotator cuff issue is.
I’m sure your doctor will tell you, but my SLAP repair involved wearing a shoulder immobilizer 24/7 except when doing rehab and showering for a week. Probably isn’t real safe to drive with that thing on. I have an office job and was able to work from home using one hand to type on my computer. Was in a sling for another month, but could take the arm out of it when sitting in a “controlled environment”. They don’t want you making any jerking movements that could damage the repair.
On the other side of the scale, I had bone spurs that were impinging on a nerve on my other shoulder removed a couple years ago. That was one month recovery until I could do anything I wanted.
Ask your doctor, be careful and start slow. Listen to your body.
[quote]Zack Nelson wrote:
I have a full thickness tear of my supraspinatus, arthritis of the acromioclavicular joint and possible/probable tear of the subscapularis and glenoid labrum. Maybe also dinked up my long head the bicep tendon near the origin. So they have been wanting to do surgery a few years on it. Like a typical meathead i keep lifting.
I hear some people who have shoulder surgery who are back to lifting within a few weeks. I doubt most need as much junk as I am supposed to have done - anyone have an idea how long before I can move it well and how long before I can lift lightly and how long before I can lift heavily???[/quote]
I had the same thing as you, as well as a torn infraspinatus and torn rotator cuff. I also had to have a piece of my clavicle removed near the acro joint because of the impingement, and got some screws and wires thrown in there for good measure. This was about 5 years ago now…
Light lifting (very light) at about 4 months, just getting mobility back… increased slowly, until I was confident in the “weld”. I would say 10 months to a year you are looking at. I was also 40 years of age at the time of the surgery… I am sure if I was 21, I would have been back in the gym the following week.
I had a SLAP repair in my right labrum which in short is when the surgeon “makes the small tear bleed” so that it would heal properly. It does require him to go in orthroscopically. Apparently avoiding the pain early on caused a small tear to not heal correctly, from continuued lifting, so by him ‘retearing it’ then imobilizing my shoulder via a sling 3 weeks then 4 weeks of PT it healed correctly. range of motion was a bitch for weeks, but 8 months out now and i am so glad to have it done.
Now im in my 3rd week of recovering from surgery on my left shoulder. This was much worse. It required ‘anchors’ and’suchors’ to hold down a more severe tear in my left labrum. Even though this is a much worse tear the pain and PT is much better than my right shoulder which did not require the hardware that my left required. I highly recommend you find a surgeon that is willing to at minimum go in and investigate what is going on. My surgeon even said MRI’s don’t reveal everything and discovered my left shoulder worse when he went in and looked than what the MRI indicated.
One thing I found after having a SLAP tear repaired (I had the anchor and suture repair) was my shoulder mobility was terrible. 3 months after surgery and physical therapy, the doctor released me and told me I could work back up to normal lifting. I told him I felt like I didn’t have a real good range of motion. Told me to work out and stretch, if not getting better in a month, he’s set me up for some additional PT. After a month
still didn’t seem right so went to PT. PT said that in general my shoulder mobility sucked (was better than before surgery though). My tear probably occurred years ago and over time I modified by movement patterns to adjust for it. Now I have to relearn how to move the shoulder and this is work and somewhat painful. Still think it’s well worth it though and hope in 6-12 months it will be good as new.