On the Up and Up

This weekend provided me with some sort of odd epiphany. I came to the unfortunate realization that I am currently not in the type of physical shape I desire to be in. I wouldn't consider myself ever being Mr. Olympia by any means, but I have never been grossly out of shape to the point where I look in the mirror in disgust. Since I hurt myself in April, I've done very little exercising. In the beginning, I was in too much pain to work out. Then finals week came around, and I was focused on the actual physical therapy for the arm and studying for the tests. Then it was off to Virginia for my brief stay in the Valley League, where I sporadically would go to the gym and do some poles during pregame. By that time it was already June, a month and a half after my injury, and things were only getting worse. I practically got lost in my own mental state, the distressed emotions that come along with the depressing realization that your arm throbs in pain when you lob a ball across the outfield.

By time surgery rolled around, I was a full-fledged professional lazy bum. I'd go to work during the day, working 8:30-3:30 in a pretty typical college summer job setting, and then I'd come home and sit on the couch the rest of the afternoon dreaming of the day when I could finally step back on the mound, and not knowing my fate for the future. When I arrived in Pensacola for my meeting with Dr. Andrews, it had been three months since I'd done any consistent physical activity whatsoever.

I sat up in bed last night fiddling around with the Velcro on my bionic arm and made the "executive" decision that the next morning, August 1st, would be the first day of the rest of my life. Enough of the self-pity and drudging along through life. I am a college athlete, I can't let myself get away from what I am ultimately trying to accomplish. Tommy John recovery is excruciatingly time consuming, and if I am going to be willing to put in the effort to come back from the surgery then I might as well push myself in other physical aspects as well.

I started the day writing out a diet guideline for myself to follow...egg whites, turkey, chicken, fish, salad, fruit, etc. It wasn't the most strict diet, but was designed to serve the purpose of reminding myself that I need to fill my body with healthy food options if I planned to commit 100% to this transformation. I arose in the morning and fixed myself a healthy breakfast and then set out to go for a run around my hilly neighborhood.

Suddenly, the jogging path I had become accustomed to in the past seemed quite a bit longer than usual. The weather, in reality around 90 degrees and fairly humid, felt like I was in an oven. My legs moved slowly, my lungs didn't seem like they opened. I slugged through the road and tried to drown away the muscle exhaustion and heavy breathing by turning up the music on my iPod, but it was tough. I pushed and pushed and pushed.

I got back to my house and sat on the couch, grabbed a drink of water and took my brace off. I took the gauze pads and ACE bandages off and wiped the sweat off the area, then reapplied new bandages. I was tired...really tired. More tired than I'd typically be after running the distance I ran. But I didn't care. I got off the couch after drinking the water and banged through a quick set of some ab exercises, some alternative workouts I picked up when I was doing P90X with teammates back in the offseason. After banging through the set of abs, I felt like a new man. I missed the feeling of being sore, the fatigued feeling after pushing your body through exercise. What I'd done today wasn't an extreme amount of physical activity in the normal standards of a college athlete, but it was better than anything I've done in a long while.

After a quick shower and a turkey sandwich, I hopped in the car and headed out to physical therapy. It was an important day of PT for me, I was going to go through some range of motion testing and some hand strength testing. My gripping exercises were becoming much easier, and my shoulder exercises against the wall were practically a walk in the park. My physical therapist commented that my hand strength was a lot better than it was last time I came in, and I was making great progress. I have been making it a point to try to reach and grab things with my left hand to try to readjust to sizes and shapes of things. I'll lift a pillow, a cup, a phone, a plate. I am very conscientious to do so with my left hand so that I can try to make daily improvements. My physical therapist said to be careful and not to lift anything that weighs more than a pound or two because my muscular system in the arm is still very frail, but that the idea of regaining my hand-eye coordination during gripping is a good one. After going through sets of the exercises for the forearm, gripping and shoulder, on came the most important part of my physical therapy session...we were going to measure the degree at which I could extend my arm. That's the whole point of the brace, to get the arm to gradually work to be able to be completely straight.

The instructions were simple: Slowly try to straighten your arm until you feel the tugging discomfort, then stop. From there, my physical therapist would take out a large protractor and measure the degree at which my arm rested. I nervously began the descent to try and straighten the arm. After moving it for what seemed like ten minutes, I felt a tugging right where the stitches lie on the inside of the elbow, and immediately stopped and notified my physical therapist. The protractor was taken out and put up against the arm...

"Its between 15 and 20 degrees away from completely straight."

I sighed and gave a warm smile. 11 days out of surgery and I was already progressing very well. It was a relief to know that I had accomplished that amount of range of motion up to that point. I asked how long, in their opinion, do they think it'll be until I am completely straight and the physical therapists said that they honestly couldn't guess. The protocol I received from Dr. Andrews says that the ROM (range of motion) for extension should progress at a rate of five to ten degrees per week, so that could mean anywhere from two to four weeks in their opinion. The generally accepted timeframe for the brace is six weeks post-operation, which would be just over four weeks from now. So judging what happened today, if I were to progress at a slow improvement rate, I'd still be on a normal pace for recovery.

The accomplishment of almost straightening my arm was a victorious feeling that I haven't felt in a long time. It was the first truly optimistic aspect of my recovery, the first visible, no doubt positively noticeable movement forward in my progress. If I could do a cartwheel (I can't do a cartwheel even when my arm isn't in a brace), I would have done one right in the middle of the physical therapy center. I iced down the arm and joked with some of the other patients that were in attendance, and then thanked them and left to head back home.

Today was a great day. I accomplished a minor feat getting myself back into an exercise routine that I plan to continue into the future. I accomplished a minor feat by getting my arm extended into a position that is ahead of schedule, which shows that the physical therapy and care I have put into my arm thus far in the young recovery process has paid off to this point.

My next PT session is Wednesday afternoon, and I'm already looking forward to it. I think tomorrow I'll wake up early and go for a run again, maybe run some stairs, maybe hop on the stationary bike for a while.

Today was a good day. So why can't tomorrow be better?