Well – being in the book business for over 30 years finally caught up with me. I am being scheduled for surgery immediately after the Salt Lake Christmas Tour in early December. At least I’ll be able to move my arm during that week!
My doctor will reattach muscles and reshape my joint somewhat. It is an outpatient procedure, and I’ll be going home the same day! Then I’ll have six weeks with nothing but passive (not muscular) movement of the arm. The muscles where the bicep attaches to the shoulder joint are entirely torn loose, and have atrophied over the last year or so. I’ll be doing physical therapy for a few months getting the muscles built back up from early February on. So – my shoulder should be out of the sling in time for RootsTech. That’s good news.
I think that moving many hundreds of heavy boxes during the move to Washington added additional stress – and doing the heavy work at NGS in St. Charles, Missouri and the SCGS Jamboree in Burbank in May and June last year caused the extreme tearing of already weakened muscles. I’ve been doing physical therapy on the shoulder since summer with no success, so we’ll now go ahead and fix this thing. If I’d had an MRI earlier, I think we may have already moved ahead with the surgery. I just got that done last week. I’m looking forward to getting back to sleep at night. This thing has been a REAL pain – not in the neck, but close by.
