Range of Motion Progress

After a friend asked me how high I could reach now with my hurt arm, I decided to take some pics so that I can see how much progress I am making. Today is a normal day, not doing great with it, not doing bad. Some days I can reach higher (going forward), but all the other pics are accurate of what I can do consistently.

No smiles.. These are very uncomfortble for me to do still. You can see that I've gained weight. And you can see my oh so lovely arms. Should've worn a long sleeve shirt. Oh well. Just shows why I want plastic surgery! And another reason not to smile!

Straight forward, arms up:

Arms up, out to the side:

External rotation:

And reaching behind my back:

This is 6wks post surgery. I go back at 12wks to check progress again.

Progress!!

Yesterday I did some major cleaning. I helped the kids clean their terribly messy rooms, and even rearranged their (very light) beds. I put a bed skirt under the girl's bed, which involved lifting the mattress. By the end of the day, I was not feeling all that great and had to take half a pain pill before bed.

This morning I did more cleaning, including lots of laundry (no folding). Then I went to water aerobics and was able to do a bit more than I could last week, but had to stop b/c of pain. A couple of hours later I had physical therapy. To be honest, given everything I'd been doing the last 2 days, I was seriously considering canceling!

I got to PT and had to warm up with a pulley thing and was about in tears. I did several new exercises and even used 5lb weights to do kickbacks and bicep curls, as well as 15lb rows. I did lots of other stuff without weights.

My shoulder... omg. It's tired, but there is no pain. It feels like it's had a good workout, but again--no pain. I even just put my hair up in a pony tail that wasn't at the nape of my neck! (I've been able to do a low pony tail with some pain for a week or so. Prior to that, I couldn't lift my arm enough to even do that!)

I'm thinking that by next week I might be ready to join the other gym and do some real workouts!! I'll probably keep doing water aerobics for awhile so that I can get some arm movements in that are easy on my shoulder.

This is the first time in so long that I feel like I'm moving FORWARD instead of backwards or in limbo!

Small Town Crap

On Thursday, I found out that my shrink goes to the gym where I plan to join. And goes to the spinning classes I plan to take. What's that, you say? She may not go to the same ones as I do b/c she works and I don't? Ha! Oh no no no! I'm not that lucky! Because of her flexible schedule, she goes to the every classes I would go to--either the 6am or the 9am. I could join another gym, you say? Ha! This is by far the best option I have in this town. This is the gym I opted out of joining and went to CrossFit instead. The only bright side I can find is that if ever asked how I know my shrink, I could say from the gym instead of therapy.

For the time being, I'm doing water aerobics, water jogging and the recumbent bike at the school Rec Center. The range of motion in my shoulder isn't where they want it to be at this point and still hurts a lot. So I'm not quite ready to "really" workout, though I'm getting quite sick of this nonsense. I'm guessing I'll join the new gym in the next week or two. The Rec Center is nice, but I just can't handle working out with 18 year olds.. or 80 year olds. It seems like it's one extreme or the other.

I thrive on group classes. It's nice to commiserate with others who are going through the same class as you are. I've formed awesome friendships at the gym. Not that I think that I'll necessarily make friends at every gym I try. But it happens. Of course, with my shrink going to the same classes I will go to, I'm kind of concerned about what that will mean.