Wednesday 31 August 2011

Day 4 and my blog has no followers!!

Oh well, who wants to read about some griping windge-bag and his injuries anyway? I guess everyone's gone to twitter; blogging's so last week!

Seriously though, when I was looking for information on shoulder conditions, I was interested in outcomes. I wanted to read about people who had recovered, not folks who were in the middle of a painful episode of physio three weeks after surgery. Humans are optimistic like that :-)

If you're reading this, you're probably faced with a choice of whether to have a tenodesis or a tenotomy. You can Google what that is if you don't know but there is trade off between the two and I hope my experience helps you to understand this trade-off better.

Tenodesis
- longer and more painful recovery
- marginally stronger bicep
- minimal cosmetic changes

Tenotomy
- shorter and less painful recover
- marginally weaker bicep
- 'Popeye' looking bicep

I aim to share with you whether there are any other issues with a tenodesis. Like I said, there is little information about this online and now that I am living with one, I'll be sure to let you know what it's like.

Stay tuned :-)

Tuesday 30 August 2011

Day 3 - how does it feel?

It's day three and other than the obvious frustrations of being in a sling, it's bearable!

I'm taking three doses of painkillers per day; each dose is 500mg of Paracetemol and 200mg of Ibuprofen. This takes the edge off of any sharp pain and just leaves me with a noticable ache is the front of the shoulder.

Feeling around the shoulder surface, the spot above the bicep is definitely swollen, which is hardly surprising really. More reason to keep taking the anti-inflammatories.

I do a light exercise routine 3 times a day which includes:
- making and releasing a fist (no pain)
- bending and straigtening the elbow (very mild pain when straight)
- pulling back the shoulder blades (no pain)
- turning the head to stretch the neck muscles (no pain)

I'm quite surprised how little it hurts to straigten the elbow; I expected this to hurt like hell!

I can lean over to the right and let my arm hang away from my side about 15 degrees with little discomfort. I figured this might be good for general mobility.

When the painkillers wear off it hurts, especially the biceps. I'm sleeping on my back or on my left side and when on my side I rest my right arm on a pillow positioned to my left. I got 6 or 7 hours last night - not bad.

This will all get more interesting when I start exercising properly. I'll post back with any notable changes in the meantime.

Sunday 28 August 2011

The day after surgery - what's the pain like?

It's 36 hours since surgery, the local anaestetic has worn off, I have a low-dose of paracetamol and tramadol inside me and a noticable ache in the front of my shoulder.

I remember waking up after the procedure and feeling the same pain, in spite of the nerve block injection I'd been given.

"Definitely had a tenodesis", I thought. Because this was an exploratoy operation, neither I nor the surgeon know exactly what he'd do. I ended up with a rotator cuff repair and a biceps tenodesis.

While the front of the shoulder aches, I am quite surprised to be able to remove the sling and straighten my arm. I expected all kinds of pain from this, but it's a relief to be able to flex one's elbow.

The back of the shoulder feels fairly painless - for now anyway. The cuff repair doesn't seem to contribute to the pain.

Washing and dressing takes longer and my wife, Julie, is being very helful - thank you sweetie xx.

During the next few days I will be following the initial exercises and blogging about the pain! These are:
- making and releasing a fist
- bending and straigtening the elbow
- pulling back the shoulder blades
- turning the head to stretch the neck muscles

Physio begins in four weeks - six weeks in a sling in total.

About me

Hi, my name is Nick Cresswell, I am a 38 year old male from London, England.

For ten years I regularly enjoyed the sport of Hang Gliding. This was until I disclocated my shoulder in an aborted aerotow launch in July 2009. I haven't flown again since then as I have been recovering from the injury. A little over two years spent out of the sport due to one human-error induced crash!

You can watch a video of one of my successful flights here

I thought I'd blog about my recent tenodesis surgery as I could find very little information about tenodesis recovery online. For the sake of context here is how I got to need a tenodesis.

My sholder dislocation was sustained with a little forward speed (20mph or so). You could liken it to coming off a motorcycle or mountain bike. This means trauma and shoulder trauma means tearing something.

I suffered an avulsion fracture which is where tendon gets pulled from the bone, but instead of the tendon tearing, the bone that anchors the tendon comes away. This can heal on it's own which it did in my case, but the healing resulted in a change to the smooth shape of the humerous (upper arm bone) which caused catching and rubbing of the sub-acromial bursa.

I had sub-acromial decompression in May 2010 which relieved the catching and rubbing, but not all of the pain went away. Inspite of a disciplined and rigorous physio program, I could not shake the chronic pain in the front and back of my shoulder.

An ultrasound exam in Jan 2011 showed I had an subluxing long-head biceps tendon, where the bicep tendon was moving around in the bicepital groove. This would explain the pain in the front of the shoulder.

The pain in the back of the shoulder had to be caused by something too - figured it was the avulsion injury. You may wonder why this pathology was not spotted by the surgeon who performed the subacromia decompression and so do I. Needless to say I sought the help of another surgeon.

Winding forward to August 2011, I write this post a day after my most recent surgery. This was an investigative procedure to find the cause of the pain. The surgeon discovered that my avulsion injury had progressed to a near full thickness tear of the rotator cuff and my biceps tendon was also torn. Both of these are now resolved with a rotator cuff repair and biceps tenodesis respectively.

For those who are interested, the tenodesis did not involve an inteference screw but was done using a suture technique.

Read my next post where I tell you what the pain is like!

Hello and Welcome...

..to my Tenodesis recovery blog.

If you've found this site then you probably have an idea of what a biceps tenodesis is and maybe have one in your future. Having had a tenodesis myself, I decided to blog my recovery because I could find very little information about tenodesis recovery online - most of the information is posted by surgeons and not based on personal experience.

I hope this collection of posts will prove useful to you as you progress with your recovery.