Thursday, February 26, 2009

Shouldering the load

Well, not really.  But I must say that my rotator cuff is doing much, much better these days.

A month out, range of motion in several axes is nearly back to normal.  There’s some discomfort, a feeling of pinching, even a bit of pain at times, however.  I may be be getting to within a few degrees of normal range, but it’s not the effortless don’t-even-think-about-it movement I’d ordinarily make.  While some movements are getting back toward normality, others are still pretty limited.  Raising my arm to the side produces some fairly bad pinching as I approach 90 degrees, i.e., straight out. 

You may recall that one of my therapeutic goals was to pull back my hair as part of the process of placing an elastic for my ponytail.  Well, I did that, with difficulty, late last week.  But my shoulder ached for the rest of the day, so I didn’t try it again until this week.  Much better the second time around, though it still requires inordinate effort and produces a good bit of discomfort while I’m doing it.

What remains significantly affected is strength.  During my weekly physical therapy sessions, I find it astonishing how much more difficult an exercise becomes when I try it with a weight ... even a one pound weight!  Really, it’s an entirely different experience.  Even without weights, my exercises become difficult toward the end of a session.  How can it be that after simply lifting my arm nine times, the tenth time it’s shaking from the effort?

Quite a few simple tasks remain difficult.  For instance, I ordinarily do the push-down-and-twist on pill bottles with my left hand, holding it with my right.  Not now, however.  I’ve gotten to the point of holding the bottle in my left hand while opening it with the right, which is a whole lot better than it was for the first two weeks.  Back then, all I could do with my left hand was hold the bottle steady on the counter while opening it with the other hand.  And I couldn’t raise the left hand to my mouth to take the pills at first.

Thankfully, I’m well beyond that.  But, for example, I haven’t yet tried to boil a pot of water for spaghetti, because I’m still not sure I could carry it from the stove to the sink to drain it.  That’s not something to do one-handed!

I just scheduled myself for another four weeks of PT.  My therapist is fairly optimistic, given the progress I’ve made thus far, that I might be able to continue my healing without professional guidance after that.  Not that I’ll be 100% OK by then, she warns.  But I’ll be close enough to keep working on improvement on my own.

I hope so.