I don’t regret my decision to retire from ultimate frisbee (to reduce the necessity of future shoulder surgeries) but there is something special about playing under the lights on a beautiful midsummer night’s eve while bathed by an ethereal glow in the foothills of the Rockies.
Summer is off to a rollicking start and I must say, is much nicer without a sling on. Simple pleasures like riding my bike and sleeping without discomfort have made life pleasant again.
Physical therapy is mostly stretching at this point. On my own, the stretches aren’t too bad, but when the PT gets his crank on, my eyes bug out a bit.
Headed to a show over the 4th at the Mish and then rolling through the rest of the summer in cruise control.
Thanks to Lindsay for posting the pictures of the Dress to Impress party. Those are some good looking peeps!
Cody brand buffalo grass seeds.
ACPI: acpi_pci_unbind should clean up properly after acpi_pci_bind
The above is my 100th commit in the Linux kernel project.
In other news, I started shoulder physical therapy today (not too painful), I’m finally getting buffalo grass installed, and otherwise generally enjoying a wet and dramatic summer here in Fort Fun.
Laissez les bon temps roulez!
Colorado June weather is always a little hinky, and today we were greeted with a biblical deluge of hail that was surprising due to its length and intensity. It was full on marble madness for about 30 minutes, and I ended up with 3 inches of ice on my front step.
The plant above is an actual cutting from the plant that Grant Wood’s mother posed with in Woman with Plants, which was acquired by my roommate through his nebulous art world contacts.
[For those of you thinking that Grant Wood rings a bell, but you can't quite put your finger on it, he's most well-known for American Gothic.]
I’ve been reading a friend’s foodie blog ever since Potlatch last year, and now I’m passing it along to you, dear readers.
You get a taste of Seattle and the lovely understated writing of a poet’s whispered observations.
But there’s also flair:
My halibut paled in comparison, but it wasn’t really fair. The halibut came over fava beans with a delicate white wine sauce. It was like Gwyneth Paltrow in a white linen dress trying to compete with Angelina Jolie in crushed velvet.
[as compared to a lamb chop cooked to perfection: (fresh bistro)]
Check it out.
I’ve been spending a lot of time in the home office lately, and the old 19″ widescreen just wasn’t cutting it. Not enough resolution to really write software, as I tend to have lots of little windows open all over the place, and really don’t want them overlapping.
Hence, an upgrade to a new Hanns-G HG281D in all of its 28″ glory and 1920×1200 resolution. The new real estate is fabulous, I must say.
Yes, taking pictures of my desk is dorky, blogging them is even worse, but at least it forces me to clean my desk once in a while, which is a good feeling. So thanks for being my foil, internets!
In other news, I’ve reached an uneasy truce with my sling. I’ve become accustomed to it enough that I can actually get a decent night’s sleep; I take it off to type; and it doesn’t smell too bad yet.
2 and 5/7 weeks done. 3 and 2/7 weeks to go.
In this shot, the surgeon is looking for the labrum. It’s supposed to be where the needle is. Whoops.
For the visual thinkers, imagine the labrum as a soft, rubbery rim running around the circumference of the socket in your shoulder’s ball and socket joint. The shoulder socket is very very shallow, which is how we get such crazy range of motion in it, and the labrum makes it into a deeper cup.
It’s supposed to be attached on the inside circumference of the rim. Mine was attached to the outside circumference. This means that the socket was shallower than it was supposed to be (because the labrum didn’t cup the humerus (the ball part of your upper arm bone) enough). For people that know how loose my shoulder was, that was one reason why.
The other reason my shoulder was so loose is because I had both a Hill-Sachs lesion and a Bankart lesion.
The Hill-Sachs is basically a dent in the humerus. It’s where the bone has been worn away from repeated dislocations. As the ball comes out of the socket, it rubbed away at the other bones in the joint.
I have quite a bit of bone loss on the other bone involved too. The normal shoulder joint is supposed to look like a pear (if you’re looking at it straight on, or looking at me in profile). Mine was worn out from all the dislocations and looks like an inverted pear. That’s quite a bit of bone loss. The doc didn’t say if I’ll get it back, and I don’t think I will.
Here, the labrum has been reattached. The white semicircle on top is bone, my humerus. The soft looking white stuff on the bottom is the reattached labrum. Yay!
Doc had to basically cut the labrum off the outside circumference of the socket and reattach it with sutures back in the inside. This is more severe than normal, and so instead of being in a sling for 4 weeks, I get a total of 6 weeks. Lovely.
Wikipedia has a nice picture of the shoulder joint. The Glenoid lig. is the labrum. Here is another good shoulder picture from a different aspect that might help you visualize it.
I don’t have much (if any) achey residual surgery pains. Now, it’s either a sharp sort of hurty, when I sneeze for example, or just the annoyance of wearing the sling.
The physician’s assistant gave me some different PT exercises to do, which I’m gladly complying with.
And in other news, my jawesome friend Brett traded cars with me, as he drives an automatic. So I’m semi-mobile.
Five more weeks. I can do it.
I tore my labrum in 1996 in a wrestling injury. Had surgery on it once, went through rehab, and promptly injured it again. My right shoulder has been extremely unstable since then, subluxing all the time, sometimes in my sleep.
So 13 years later, I finally decided to get it fixed. Again.
It was outpatient surgery, and unlike last time, completely arthroscopic. I’ve been resting since Monday, and am mostly off the Percocet now, although still easily fatigued. Luckily I have the best friends in the world and there’s been a steady stream of visitors bearing gifts of food. Can’t ask for anything more than that.
Becca, Jess, Devin, Mike, Knapik, Lindsay, Brett — thanks.
Why the torn labrum is baseball’s most fearsome injury
My neutral position sling, from the future. Watch out Christian Bale!
Tuesday am. I want to shower, which means taking off the dressing.
No pain, no gain. This was the worst part due to the extreme sticky nature of the dressing’s glue.
Almost done, although it took me 10 more minutes to get it off from this state, due to the extremely awkward position. I’m not gonna lie, I felt like puking after this from the pain.
You can see all three ’scope entry wounds here.
Like a bloody butterfly emerged from its chrysalis.