Two Weeks Post-Op

...and this is what the arm looks like. Please excuse the redness right above the scar in the crease of my elbow, that is simply just an abrasion from my scratching. The skin gets very dry and irritated being cooped up in bandaids and an arm sleeve nearly every minute of the day.

And yes, that is a Looney Tunes t-shirt. I got it for $3 at the Gap Outlet in Myrtle Beach last year.

Aside from the aforementioned self-made rash, everything else pictured is quite normal. The stitches in my arm were removed Tuesday afternoon by a family friend who works in the Emergency Room at White Plains Hospital. I had three stitches in the wrist and two in the forearm (the wrist served the purpose of extracting the tendon, forearm to move the nerve). The main scar, the "four-inch scar" I spoke about a few weeks ago in the blog post entitled "The Greek Life of Sports Medicine", had one long stitch in it that held together end pieces, almost like a river has tributaries.

The last few days have had a lot of ups and downs in terms of the progress of the arm. In the immediate hours following the removal of the stitches, swelling began to form in the forearm and around the TJ scar. I was reassured by several people in the medical profession that this is very common, as the body is simply reacting to the stitches being removed by sending blood to the area to compensate for the new responsibility of skin holding itself together. In fact, I was told, swelling is a good thing in this case because it means the body is working to heal itself. Simply icing the swollen areas a few times a day will suffice in decreasing the swelling and allowing the arm to comfortably do its bodily service.

Physical therapy yesterday was another largely successful session. We added a few new exercises in the mix, an exercise that involved flexing and extending the arm with a ball inside the arm, and a gripping exercise with a rubber device that looks like a tennis racket. Combining these exercises with the previous exercises I had already been doing was great. The new exercises worked different muscle groups in the area and at different intensities than I was used to up to that point. A typical healthy person would go through these routine exercises and probably wonder why they were wasting their time with such nonsense. But I must say, I was exhausted after my session. The weakness in my arm is still completely astounding to me.

We measured my extension ROM once again and once again I had an increase. Yesterday I was just 12 degrees away from completely straight. While this is obviously great news, my physical therapist did warn me that it could just mean Monday was a bad day and this is the norm...one can never know how fast the body will progress in such a manner. Still, the optimism was there, and my physical therapist and I both agreed that if I continued at the pace I am going, I could have the brace completely off before I head back to school. Our first day of classes is August 24th so assuming I'll head back a few days before then to move into my new house, that would mean that in just one month I could have the brace off. Two weeks ahead of protocol! That is, of course, after I take pictures and e-mail them to Dr. Andrews. Nothing can be fully accomplished without the physician's permission, and the brace is certainly staying on until he deems it safe enough to take off.

Today was a little bit of a different story. I woke up in the morning to a screaming ache in my arm. Not just the elbow, which typically has a slightly dull throb in it, but the entire arm. My flexibility was nearly non-existant. I couldn't bend my arm enough to even touch my collar or straighten enough to even touch my belt buckle. It was as if I threw 120 pitches last night in 100 degree heat and then proceeded to sleep on my arm the wrong way. It was sore, in pain and numb...all at the same time. I tried to stretch it out, tried moving it around, tried gripping things. Nothing would work. It simply wasn't going to feel any better.

I had thoughts about grabbing a hydrocodone pill and just taking one to ease the pain a bit. I hadn't taken one in a week, and I'm only two weeks post-op. I figured it's not a bad excuse. But I wanted to push through it, I didn't want to mask the pain. I iced it down and rested it some more, keeping it pretty much stationary for a good portion of the day. I recalled the physical therapists in Florida explaining to me that there might be some days in between PT sessions where I wake up and my arm is really, really sore. They said often times when you start a new exercise or push the arm a bit more than usual, that will happen. They said that in the case that something like that does occur, don't worry. Just relax and give it a day off to rest up and heal.

I shrugged the advice off two weeks ago, thinking in my head "I'm not some kind of baby like that. I can work through soreness it can't be that bad." And yet I sit here now writing this blog post and I honestly can't remember if there was ever a time that my arm felt more sore than it did this morning.

I am hoping that a good night sleep and a good physical therapy session will boost the arm's strength a bit more as I head into the weekend. I was advised not to worry about the soreness in the arm, and I'm not. But it'd sure be nice to not ever have to experience that again.

Although I'm pretty sure it will happen again. Probably the day after tomorrow, and many more days after that. I guess it comes with the territory.