More (small) challenges
Three trips to the doctors this month have delivered all kinds of profound diagnoses.
Regarding the shoulder issue I told you about recently: Six weeks of physical therapy proved remarkably helpful in reducing pain and returning my ability to make it through a swim workout. Yet an occasion ache remains and certain movements continue to hurt. This prompted my orthopedist, Dr. Michael Repine, to schedule an MRI. That test showed a two centimeter tear in my labrum, the topmost tendon of the rotator cuff.
The good news is that it can be fixed. The only option to do so, as supported by Dr. Sharon Wetherall, is a complete detachment and reattachment of the labrum.
The bad news is that recovery time is four to six months for normal daily activity function. A year before full strength is returned.
The second piece of medical news started off a positive note. Since I began running on a prosthesis sixteen years ago, Stumpie has suffered from what I’ve come to consider a circulation issue, causing me to stop and dangle and/or reboot to subdue the pain and restore blood-flow. Though four different prosthetists have built me run legs over the years, the pain has been relatively consistent and I’ve always presumed the problem was some sort of fit issue; perhaps Stumpie is oddly shaped or constructed and, hence, a difficult fit…or something.
My current prosthetist, Erik Shaffer of A Step Ahead Prosthetics and Orthotics, proposed the problem could be vascular insufficiency. No one, professional or otherwise, had ever mentioned this possibility, nor had the thought ever crossed my mind.
Sharon highly recommended Dr. Nelson Mozia for a consult. He prescribed a CT angiogram to inspect the integrity the veins and arteries in Stumpie. The initial results were just what I was hoping for: both the veins and arteries are severely occluded. This is good news because we’ve finally found the cause, which means we can do something about it!
Well, after Dr. Mozio consulted with an interventional radiologist and a CT radiologist, they concluded that the occlusions were so severe and widespread that a fix was out of the question. Angioplasty will not work due to the severity and a surgical procedure could result in an above knee amputation if it were to go awry. I ruled that one out immediately.
The one non-surgical option is a blood-thinning medication called Plavix which might help much needed oxygen reach those little Stumpie muscles. In the short term I’ve opted to give this a go. I’m told it takes ten days for full effect—on Sunday’s 23 mile run, day 7 of the medication, I dangled and rebooted many times. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
In the meantime, I’ll be getting a second opinion.
The final trip to the doc was not for me but for the family doctor—Sharon. The ultrasound showed that there is indeed an embryo growing in her womb! Unquestionably the biggest challenge of the three.
Slow is Good
I’ve been slow lately, in a good way. In the two weeks following our return from our big trip to Australia, I flew to five cities in four states for four speaking gigs and one race. Since then I’ve flown to zero cities to do zero things.
My time has primarily been spent caring for Jack and Luke, three and a half and two years old, respectively and Sharon has begun her career as an anesthesiologist at Lutheran Hospital in Wheatridge, CO, 18 miles south. We’ve hired a fabulous Peruvian nanny, Fabiola, who helps us out three or four days a week for a few hours a day.
I’d like to say that I’m so popular on the speaking circuit that the phone rings all by itself, however, not only am I not there yet but even the best of ‘em aren’t where they were just a year ago as professionals of my ilk are among the first to get scratched off the new budget in a pared back economy.
Alas, this gives me some time to retool and refocus not only on the speaking business but also on some other aspects of life. For instance, Jack and Luke have just carved their first ski tracks down the slopes of Vail; I’ve been playing hockey on Friday afternoons at the local YMCA (which also provides two hours of free child watch!); and the elder progeny recently stood/sat on the ice, mostly observing and crying, at his first hockey practice. We’ll try not to overload…
Sharon and I spent most weekends in October/November home shopping and we’re thrilled to have found one in Lafayette, just east of Boulder. It’s an enormous and gorgeous home, which we’re blessed to have come across and eager to get in to. We close on it next week, but will not be moving in until March 1. Our rental lease expires then and the current owners are waiting on their new home to be built, so they’ll be renting back from us.
My time and energy has also returned to training. With no home to remodel (as much as I liked it, I didn’t like the time sucking quality) or flights to board, the frequent rider miles have begun to grow along with some good quality runs. I swam for the fist time in three months a few days ago.
Which brings me to my latest health care provider, Jeff the Physical Therapist. Starting sometime earlier this millennium, my left shoulder began to ache on occasion, typically in the morning, but rarely to the point that I would even pay it an ounce of attention. About 18 months ago, it began aching when I would reach forward/overhead and be particularly bothersome both in the morning and at bedtime. Not that I did much of it, but I was still able to swim (and bike and run, which I always do more of) so I didn’t think too much of the pain—it would pass…
Just as last race season was getting underway, the discomfort I felt each morning concerned me that I wouldn’t be able to race in the coming months. Yet by the time I occasionally got to the pool at mid-morning, the pain would be relatively gone. This lasted all through the summer and right up to world champs in September. As much as I’d like to, I can’t blame my disastrous race and swim on this injury.
However, over the following few weeks of Ozzie vacation, the nights were getting worse and worse and progressing to the point where I’d wake up in the middle of the night unable to feel my left arm, the sensation subsiding in the aching shoulder. And when the arm didn’t go numb, then my left wrist would be very tender. One or the other.
Eight or nine weeks of this, and lots of ibuprofen, was about enough and about the same time we settled back into Boulder, Sharon started her new job, the health insurance got straightened and I was able to visit my new primary doctor and an orthopedic specialist at The Boulder Medical Center. The docs concurred that an impingement is to blame: the soft tissue between the rotator cuff and the underside of the bone that is the top part of the shoulder (acromion) gets pinched. This causes the pain. The numbing of my left arm is most likely caused by a pinched nerve in my shoulder, but in a different area than the aforementioned impingement. Whatever’s causing the numbness they feel is also referring the “pain” that I feel in my wrist, my brain not knowing the difference. Looks like I have an MRI to figure that part out in my very-near future.
So that brings me to Jeff of the Boulder Center for Sports Medicine who is doing a great job rehabbing me and this has allowed me to get back in the pool. Surgery may eventually come into play to gently reshape my acromion. If it does it won’t be for awhile since I’m focusing my efforts on the next year’s focal race: Ironman Canada, August 2010.
So, that being written, I gotta get the boys ready to head to the gym (the other local Y with free child watch) and work on my swim form. Slowly.
