Saturday, February 27, 2010

Joel v2.0 (or is it v3.0?)

My latest attempt to become bionic is now underway. Monday afternoon I had surgery to repair my torn labrum in my right shoulder. 18 months ago the only surgery I had ever had was wisdom teeth removal, and now I've had a ruptured Achilles tendon repaired followed by this torn labrum.

I know what the final blow was to the labrum, the fall off the double teeter totter on my bike, but I'm guessing that it has been damaged a lot through the years with all the impacts and falls I've had. The tough part of this injury was that it happened in November, but I am just now getting it fixed and face a 4 - 6 month recovery period. 6 months means late August. Ouch. I should have gotten it fixed months ago, but after being able to ride/ski/etc on it without too much pain I hoped to will it back to healthy. It became apparent to me that it was never going to be well again without surgery, so in an effort to be able to play catch with Cooper (and believe me all he wants to do is throw) I needed to get this fixed now and get recovered.

So here are some of the pics that still make me a bit light headed to look at. These are shots from the procedure where they smoothed the damage cartilage out then put in a series of pins and anchors to which the damaged labrum is reattached to. You can see the pins / anchors in a couple of these shots. I think I heard them tell me I had 6 of these.


From Shoulder surgery


From Shoulder surgery


From Shoulder surgery



So now a full 5 days removed from surgery things are already starting to get better. After having a complete rupture of the Achilles I got a lot of the "Man I bet that really hurt" comments, and to be honest if I see a movie where someone cuts an Achilles or something like that it about makes me throw up still, but it certainly didn't peg out the pain meter to 10 by any stretch. Yeah it hurt, but I remember waking up from surgery and having pain in the 3 or 4 out of 10 range. Not bad.

The labrum repair on the other hand was a contrast. Didn't hurt that bad when it happened. Was to be an arthroscopic procedure instead of the huge incision for the Achilles repair, and I really thought it would be easy peasy. Not so much. I don't remember it real clearly, but evidently when I came out of surgery I was tossing around and thrashing exclaiming to be in 9.5 out of 10 pain. The nurses loaded me up (and I mean loaded) on pain killers and by the time things started to clear up a bit and Jill and Cooper showed up the pain had subsided.

Things have rapidly gotten better and in the past couple days I've been able to spend time sitting around without the sling on and be comfortable. I still can't raise my arm or move it at the shoulder, but I'm off the pain meds and the swelling is almost completely gone at this point. Diagnosis is to wear the sling for 6 weeks and basically do nothing with it until after 6 weeks at which time we'll start range of motion and then strengthening.

Thanks to all for the kind wishes and special thanks to Jim and Judy for the balloon (Cooper loved it till he popped it) and the flowers.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Cupid and Cooper


From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots



Happy Valentines Day to all, we had a nice relaxing weekend around the house after an exhausting week. We did dinner out last night, so tonight we did some Thai takeout and watched Olympics while playing around with Super Cooper and his collection of new toys. He got a sweet wagon for Christmas, but given his track record of running his smaller wagon into sleeping dogs we had not given it to him until this weekend. He also got a OState ball and bat that we have been previously afraid to give him for obvious reasons.

Maybe Cooper has matured, but more than likely we just gave in and gave the stuff to him. In the past couple of days, "ball" is just about the only word he has said and boy has he said "ball" a lot. He will hardly eat his lunch if there is a basketball game, and I thought we weren't ever going to make it back to the house on our neighborhood walk a couple days ago when he saw two kids playing basketball in their driveway.


Modeling some new Valentine's day pajamas from Frumpy
From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots


From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots


From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots


Coop and I playing around
From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots


From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots


Coop points out the hearts on Valentine's Day
From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots



While out and about yesterday, we stopped by Target to replace Coop's rubber bouncy ball (the old one met its demise at the teeth of an overly anxious Labrador). In addition to not one but two bouncy balls, Cooper got a new inflatable tee ball set. He has been pushing around balls with his bat and hitting the ball out of our hands with the bat, so we thought this would be a good addition.

*** Disclaimer - I dressed the kid today, Jill wanted it to be known that the reason his clothes are too small is that his father dressed him, not her.

From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots


Cooper showing us where his belly button is
From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots


From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots


Coming in for an overhand smash, maybe tennis instead of baseball?
From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots


Setting it up again
From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots


Another hit, looks like a double down the line to me
From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots


Self portrait of me and Cooper
From Cooper's Valentines Day Shots

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Damaged Goods

Just as I had feared, I'd done enough damage to my right shoulder that I'm going to have to go under the knife again. I've torn my labrum, which holds the ball of the shoulder socket in place. As you can see in this MRI, the shoulder is shifter back now due to the labrum being torn. As the doc explained, the labrum is kind of like a golf tee in how the ball sits in a concave socket. Well since I've torn the rear part of mine, the shoulder socket doesn't want to stay in place.

In this still shot from the MRI, you can see the tear (black area) in the labrum and how the ball of the shoulder is shifted back towards it due to no support.



The surgery itself is much less invasive than the Achilles surgery I had in November 08, but the recovery appears more painful. 4 - 6 months before I can mountain bike and probably about 3 before I can even get on a road bike. Crazy to think that one small fall from 3 - 4 feet back in November could have this kind of damage and lasting pain, but it sure did. The good news is that it can be fixed and even if this Summer is pretty much gone for me before it starts, maybe my shoulder will be corrected for the summer after this and the one after that.

And I won't be riding any double teeter totters again anytime soon...

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Which way is up?

Seems I've been running ragged lately, and unfortunately don't really see an end in sight. Its a busy time on the Calgary project, which means I have to be there pretty much every week and I'm backlogged constantly. The good news was that I was able to squeeze in a couple days off to have delayed Christmas with the Lovejoy clan.

Jim and Judy drove in from The Natural State and Justin and Dr. LK stopped in from Seward's Folly before seeking some sun in Hawaii. We had 3 days together, which is really unusual these days given all our hectic schedules and geographical diversity. We sampled some Pasta Jay's cuisine on Thursday night for Chicken Julianna, a must dine when we have out of town guests.

We started out with a trip to the Butterfly Pavilion, a place we have driven by hundreds of times but had never been. Now that we have a kiddo, we have an excuse to go to these places. It was a pretty neat little place, and Jill stared down her fears and held a tarantula. Dr. LK and Judy followed suit. For the record, I still have no intentions of holding any snake.


Cooper was interested in all the animals
From Lovejoy delayed Christmas


We caught the butterfly presentation were they released new butterflies out and then wandered around on our own.
From Lovejoy delayed Christmas


After we saw all the spiders, insects and butteflies we played around in the other areas. This was a bean bag toss that Cooper loved, kid is getting a good arm.
From Lovejoy delayed Christmas


OK, so the rest of us threw a couple too
*** Disclaimer *** - My shoulder is destroyed, hence he throwing like a girl in this photo
From Lovejoy delayed Christmas



On Friday, we got some great weather and the crew sans Judy and Cooper headed up to Winter Park to make some turns. It was the first trip up for Jill and I this season, and the first in several years for Justin, Dr. LK and Jim. Great weather, really nice snow (although thin in some spots) and few people made for a great day on the slopes. We skied up 35 miles and 17k worth of terrain, a pretty good day all things considered.


Google earth view of our day


From Lovejoy delayed Christmas


From Lovejoy delayed Christmas


From Lovejoy delayed Christmas


Justin & Dr. LK hanging at 12,500 which probably felt downright warm compared to Fairbanks
From Lovejoy delayed Christmas


I didn't get my skis waxed, so I grabbed a draft off an unknowing Justin on our way over to Vasquez Ridge
From Lovejoy delayed Christmas


It wouldn't be a visit from Dr. LK without some big arms.
From Lovejoy delayed Christmas



We couldn't let Justin & Dr. LK get out of town without leveraging their home improvement prowess and putting them to work. We bought a new dishwasher, and pretty much made them do all the work to put it in. I acted like I helped from time to time, but I think I was mainly in the way.


I was checking the water connection underneath when Cooper got up from his nap and decided to help me inspect things.
From Lovejoy delayed Christmas



We finally got some nice (albeit "normal" most years) weather and all loaded up and headed to the zoo. We met up with Sarah & Reese and made our way around the zoo and checked out the animals. The big highlight was getting to see the feeding of the gorillas, that was pretty cool to see the smaller, faster ones hoarding food and running from the bigger, but slower silverback male.


Cooper got up close and personal with a peacock who was roaming free
From Lovejoy delayed Christmas


Justin & Cooper
From Lovejoy delayed Christmas