Injury update

A bit of an injury update today. I am still planning on getting to the first timers guide to triathlon that I mentioned yesterday, but it is currently a work in progress. Hopefully I will get to it in the second half of this week.

The reason I thought I would give an injury update is because it feels like I haven't complained about it in ages. Plus I went to the physio today and so I have learnt a bit more. Spoiler Alert: I am back to the surgeon tomorrow and should know even more then, so tomorrow's update may well be another injury update!!! Exciting.

Anyway, what I got from the physio today was the reassuring knowledge that the pain I am feeling is fairly typical. That makes me feel a lot better because my shoulder and upper arm was quite sore all of last week and I couldn't help but be concerned that I might have damaged it in some way. This reassuring knowledge doesn't make my shoulder hurt any less, but it does allay the fear that my shoulder is critically flawed and is danger of falling off during the night. Which is a totally legitimate fear.

In the above paragraph you may have noted that I said that the pain is typical, rather than normal. I make this distinction because in an ideal world it wouldn't hurt at all. However, the sort of pain I am feeling is typical of when you are recovering from shoulder surgery and you give your shoulder a jolt, like I did last week. According to the physio that jolt would have caused some swelling in my subacromial bursa (Google it). The swelling means that whenever I lift my arm there is now impingement between the bursa and the plate. This causes referral pain down my arm. As I said, not normal, but perhaps not unexpected when recovering from this kind of surgery.

The nice thing is that the solution to my pain is easy. Wait. The swelling will go down and it will stop hurting. The solution to stop it happening again is easy too. Stop falling over. Simple.

How long it will take for the swelling to go down I have no idea, but I am hopeful it won't be too much longer. The pain has already reduced a lot from last week and so I think I am well on my way. I am also hoping that once the pain subsides I may be able to train a bit more convincingly. At the moment I have pretty much given up on the idea of swimming before the plate comes out, however, you never know what will happen once the swelling subsides. I may get a better idea once I have been to the surgeon tomorrow.

Until the pain reduces my plans for training are fairly conservative and sound a lot like a Kickr. One of the things I had been uncertain about until today was what contribution training might have had to my pain and also what training I could be doing. I had been sticking to a very strict, if it hurts don't do it policy in the hope speeding up the healing process. But I had been wondering if I just needed to not be training at all. What I know now is that the pain isn't caused by training, so I should be good to do some exercise. Phew. But at the same time I suspect it is probably a good idea to stick to the, if it hurts don't do it policy, just to make sure nothing is irritating the subacromial bursa. I suspect that includes staying away from the jolting caused by running for the short term. Still, having clarity around what I can and can't do is a big improvement over not knowing.

The other reassuring thing I got from the physio today was confirmation that how I had been treating the pain had been correct. In line with my, if it hurts don't do it policy I had cut back my rehab exercises a fair bit. Some of them were just too painful. However, there is always that doubt in the back of you mind. They are rehab exercises after all. They are supposed to help make you better, should I be pushing through. However, the physio confirmed that certain ones would just be causing irritation and that I was right to have stopped them. Notch one up for listening to your body.

So that is the injury for now. The good news is that the pain isn't coming from my injury, but is more a symptom of the solution. Having written that it doesn't sound like particularly good news, but it is. It means I haven't made anything worse in terms of my original injury, so my recovery is still on track. This current pain might be annoying, but isn't an issue in the long term.