Two weeks ago I finally took the plunge and decided to go ahead with getting my left shoulder operated on. It has now been painful for well over a year – supposedly a frozen shoulder but basically one that won’t reach up, out or swipe overhead (e.g. with a pickleball bat in hand).
The surgeon chap made it sound all so easy – when don’t those buggers, just trying to reel you in. I agreed to a procedure called an arthroscopic artholysis of shoulder contracture +/- manipulation – basically a way to give my shoulder more movement. When I asked the question about recovery time – ‘how long till I will be playing pickleball again, for example’ – his reply was ‘oh, two weeks’.
So it hasn’t OF COURSE quite worked out that way. The nerve block that was meant to wear off within 8 hours took 24 hours, so I had a total dead arm till then. Apologies to Mark for trying to chase my duck salad lunch round the table the next day with little luck, it turns out eating right handed is not my forte.
I then engaged with the physio exercises with surprising effort – I really am determined to get my shoulder working properly again. I did the exercises multiple times a day as the Parkside physio told me. Then booked an appointment with the very good physio at Pure Sports in Raynes Park, to get a second view.
The morning before I saw him however, I decided to use an industrial wet wipe thing to clean our garage wall, as the bikes were out being maintained and it was begging for a scrub down. I over-reached and PLOP CRUNCH GRIND – it felt like I’d done something not as major as dislocating my shoulder, but like something had slipped out of where it should be, gone a bit lumpy and then headed back in. Gross.
This then happened again at the physio’s – he had me holding a sort of skipping rope with the middle up on a pulley – and as my left arm heading upwards, it did it again. Cue swearing and grimacing from me and the words you never want to hear from a medical person – ‘I’ve never seen that happen before’.
And then it did it a third time as I unwisely, but hardly excessively, reached into the washing machine to get a couple of socks off the back wall of the drum. Grind plop scrunch. Ouch.
Spoke to the surgeon as I was a bit concerned. He of course was passing it off as totally normal. And then as I ventured the words ‘oh, its just that it surprised me as you said to me that I’d be back playing pickleball after two weeks’ his reply was ‘oh I only said that because it was what you wanted to hear’.
What the Actual F*ck????? I think I just got massively gaslit by a bloody supposed expert.
So – very annoying that my shoulder is going to clearly take much longer to mend and that I go to Spain this Friday – cycling over the cliffs is def out. Pickle and padel are out for at least a few more weeks (and that might be optimistic). Swimming can be used for water therapy but only very light stuff. All really annoying!!
And I am still deciding what to do re his comment. I’ll get better from the op and then we will see – what a tosser. Grrr!!!!!!