Getting Back to Training

I just saw an orthopedist today, eleven days after having my shoulder rotator cuff operated on. He checked the puncture wounds in my shoulder (healing nicely) and gave me advice about how to treat them (no more antibiotic ointment and no bandages), and told me to keep taking it easy on my arm.

He told me that different orthopedic surgeons give different advice about how to recover. He said the one who did my surgery has a somewhat conservative approach: Don't start doing any exercises for at least eight weeks. Why? Because he believes the possible risk to the surgical repair is too great with exercising too soon. Some surgeons have you raising your hand above your head and so on; my surgeon wants me to wear my sling faithfully and to do only those little pendulum exercises three times a day until I see him in another three weeks.

"He says the purpose of the surgery is to fix the joint and relieve the pain; you may have stiffness from not exercising sooner, but you don't risk tearing out the tendon attachments."

And I say, "Hurray for that opinion." I totally agree. Stiffness can be dealt with later. In fact, it seems to me that with other joint and muscle injuries I've had in the past, when I worried about getting stiff and exercised those muscles too soon I just incurred further damage; when I was forced to lay off the exercise for awhile, I started recovering much sooner.

So I'm going to be watching the men's semifinals whenever they come on, binge-watching "Sherlock" for as long as those old episodes keep being replayed, and reading, reading, reading.

And then I'll get back to training.