Rehab

And no no, not the Alcoholic Kind.

I'm talking about my shoulder rehab. After the surgery, I was faithful to my Physical Therapist who worked on me. I still love her saying, "This is going to hurt you more than it's gonna hurt me..." True. I had great improvement on my range of motion. She and her intern were a great team working on me. I think it greatly improved my healing time and range of motion. I stayed away from really strenuous activity and started swimming.

Swimming has really helped heal my shoulder as I can vary the resistance with the fluid. My shoulder is supported and it's helped me stretch. Doing it by myself also helped me push it at the right level. I also took it very easy. I think it has helped a lot in the healing process.

Anyways, I'll be back, and adding more things to keep my fat ass from growing.

That's it for now.

Shoulder Labrum Repair (with pictures)

The pictures are graphic. So warning.

The surgery went well. I'm recovering at the moment and then go onto Physical Therapy.

SLAP Tear!

So it's a SLAP Tear.

Had an MRI done today.

Here's the extract from the report:

1. SLAP Tear.
2. Mild articular surface fraying at the insertion of the super status. No full thickness rotator cuff tear.
3. Suspected humeral avulsion of the glenohumeral ligament (HAGL), as evidenced by contrast extravasation through the axillary recess along the medial humeral neck and inferior subscapularis.

I am not a doctor, so I really don't have a deep understanding what the above passage meant.

Basically, something is torn. It needs to be fixed. It doesn't heal by itself and could get progressively worse.

So. I'm an engineer by training. Usually if you have a bearing or a joint fail, you renew or refurbish said bearing or joint.

Since I can't order a new SLAP from the OEM, I will have surgery on 27 OCT 2009 to fix the tear.

X - Rays!

Well, I went to get my shoulder looked at today. The X-Rays came back and well, it's not the bone at least.

It may be the Rotator Cuff or something else that the Doctor mentioned, it had a specific medical sounding name, but I forgot it.

So I have an MRI scheduled on Wednesday. Just gotta sit and wait, in the meantime. Rest and Ice.

Shoulder....

From: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/imagepages/19623.htm

That's a picture. Basically I like pictures, I'm a visual person.

Anyways, I called up the Sports Medicine Clinic at Northgate and they've got me an appointment at 8:30 in the morning on Saturday. We will see how it goes. Apparently, I was there for my right shoulder awhile back when the receptionist quickly pulled up my record.

It feels a bit better, but I'm not competing in the Rainier Cup this weekend. Mainly because: 1 it's hard to get a medical appointment with a good doctor, and 2. My shoulder still hurts, and competing in a local tournament while hurt doesn't really do me any good. Now if I was Olympic Caliber or World Championships, that's one thing, but I'm a recreational player, doing this stuff for fun. I just want my shoulder to heal up fast so that I can train again.

Popped my shoulder.

Popped my shoulder tonight. Hmmn. I think it's back in place. I'm icing it and taking motrin.

We'll see in the morning.

Tuesday Night at the Budokan

It was another practice at the Budokan.

We practiced rollovers from the turtle. I'm a bit rusty.

Anyways, did standing and groundwork. Overall a decent time.

So, it's been tough trying to recover with my knee. It's quite sensitive and it still hurts. A knee injury affects and permeates your whole life. I guess the point of it is to overcome adversity and keep on going. It's tough, especially knowing that it's hard to get involved and life in general is tough. I do like judo and fighting. My knee seemed very mobile and it was working.

I just have to get going on my other activities, since I let my knee injury stop me from living life to the fullest.  I know now that life goes on, and I should've been going to the pool or something like that. When you stop working out, everything just piles up and you become rather lazy.

It's easy to become lazy. So, I gotta keep on keepin' on.

Sunday Night at Seattle Jujutsu

With my knee passing the test of Thursday Night Practice, I feel that I can engage in more active sports. Besides that my fat ass is literally growing. I put on some compression shorts the other day and my belly hung over it. I've gained 8 lbs. since the knee injury and I have to do something about it. Blechh.

It's easy to fall into, "Woe is me, I'm injured..." trap where you don't do basically anything for awhile. 

It sucks in a span of a month. 

Anyways, practice was ran by Lana. She did moving uchikomi drills. It was fun to do an hour and a half of uchikomi to practice and refine some tachi-waza. 

We did some old school ouchi/kouchi drills, as well as combos between seio, kouchi/ouchi, and other drills. 

Overall it was a great night. It was great to get back and have the blood moving again. I took it rather easy and it was great that I can actually do the uchikomi .

Back in the Saddle. Thursday night practice at Budokan.

Thursday Night practice at the Budokan, was a bit of post hangover recovery. That is, that people were back to practice after the Continental Crown.

Well the Continental Crown was a huge affair with the whole weekend taken up setting up and tearing down the venue, the prep work, and of course the matches themselves. It seems the club is getting tighter, mainly there are a lot of volunteers making the tournament happen.

Thursday Night was typical practice with warm-up, technique and then randori session. My knee has been getting better, and I finally deemed it possible to actually engage in newaza randori.

The technique of the night was an oseakomi pin, which was a bit unorthodox. It involves grabbing the arm passing over the top and pinning from the side. The pin was quite effective, and can easily transition to straight arm bar, or an ude garami. Otherwise it was a good pin.

You can see the technique in this Youtube video at minute 0:45 to 0:48. By the way this is one of my favorite judo video compilations of all time...

I engaged in a bit of standup randori for only one round.

Other than that everything was peachy keen.

Listening to Auburn Bob's Advice

.... So I have been taking it easy.

I didn't go Thursday, Sunday and tonight's Judo Practice. Last night was soccer and I simply watched from the sidelines and watched.

It's really tough for me to sit on the sidelines. It sucks even more being hobbled. I skip/hop from place to place It sucks. I do need to go to the gym somehow and not push myself because being fat sucks. I've totally eaten about 3 lbs. of Halloween Candy. All that excess. OUCH!

Sitting down and being sedentary is just not good for my health. NOT so good.

Anyways took pictures from last night's soccer game. It was fun to watch, but I'd rather I was out on the field. The smart thing was that I didn't bring in my gym bag. Which forced me to sit on the sidelines and support the team. My Defensiveman, Ted, his outer left knee was bugging him and I saw him hobbling after the game. Not good.

I really think that my circle of friends and myself are getting older. I don't know. When I was much much younger, say 10 years ago, not as many injuries floated around, and if it did, people would be sideline for about a week or so and then back in the game.

Then again, I've only been hurting for a week and a day and it sucks. I have noticed significant improvement in my knee. It's coming to the point that it's almost mobile, I'm just going to take it easy because it's not as painful and I could easily push it to the point of breaking again.

For now, just enjoy these pictures:

My right knee HURTS!

Credit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Knee_diagram.svg

Anyways, the inside of my right knee hurts. I'm no doctor, but it feels like my medial collateral ligament (MCL) was bashed up. At least it's not the infamous ACL (Anterior cruciate ligament).

The good thing is it just hurts, I hobble because of the pain, but nothing too major. (I hope). It could be a tendon too. Don't know. The last time I was hurting with the shoulder injury. A couple months back here:Shoulder Injury.

That injury was caused by an upper right bicep tendon tear which just needed Motrin, time and warm stretches to heal. I'm hoping that's it.

I just could not sleep last night because of the pain. I've been bruised up before with my rib hurting for a couple of days, but that was not that bad. Sure it hurts and can't sleep, but being ambulatory is a big important of normal every day life.

Speaking of other injuries. I've got a minor cauliflower ear on my left ear, but that's not that bad, it only hurts when I sleep on my left side. Anyways, with all that aside, you play sports and you will eventually get hurt a bit. It's a normal part of life. The thing is, I did not expect it from soccer. It was after all a Recreational "D" level league, or as recreational or non-competitive as you can get.

I still love it, though and it breaks up the monotony of the normal grappling routine. Which, I do love grappling and is still my priority. However, variety is the spice of life. The last thing I want to ever do is "burn out" which I often see happen in martial arts. Someone goes hard for very long and eventually burns out, not to be seen for a very long time. I've done the same. I think I'll be good to go once again.

Which totally bums me out about my knee. Tonight's practice, I was looking forward to it after a whole week of not going grappling due to a head cold. I'm going to get a soft knee brace for my right knee and see how that pans out.

I think I'm just going to pop a few more Motrin and call it good.

Regence is awesome and 800 mg Motrin

So Monday morning I feel a nasty pain on my right shoulder after icing it all night on Sunday. At 10:00 I called Regence (my insurance carrier) and Debbie x4856 at Regence told me I could go to the Ballard Sports Medicine Clinic to check out one of their Doctors, since they are a PPO.

At 10:07, I called Amanda at the Sports Medicine Clinic, pleaded my case and said she'll see what she can do and call me back. At 10:15, she got me an appointment for 2:00 PM. As in less than 4 hours from now. She is just awesome! Not only was this any appointment, but this was an appointment with Dr. Hsu who is an Orthopedic Surgeon who specializes in shoulder injuries. I was in luck!

At 13:45. I checked in with the front desk, filled out paperwork and by13:50 I was done. At exactly 14:00 I was seen by a nurse who did preliminaries. She then referred me to the X-Ray tech on staff who took four X-rays of my shoulder. At 14:20 I was seen by Dr. Hsu. He looked at the X-Rays and made the diagnosis. His diagnosis was that I don't have any serious injuries in my right shoulder. Thank Goodness! He did some other tests and said that I pulled my upper right bicep tendon. I should rest, ice it and take ibuprofen. He told me to take 4 days off from working out and then gradually work out and see how it works. Light at first, and work up to full intensity by the end of next week. If things deteriorate, do a follow up. However I should be fine!

At 14:30 I was out of the clinic. Done! This was the most efficient phone call to specialist that I've seen in awhile. Also should I need Physical Therapy they have it on site at the Ballard Sports Clinic. It's a pretty cool thing to know that my insurance carrier can take care of things rather quickly.