Catch me LIVE on Ask About Fly Fishing Internet Radio tomorrow night.
Over the last ten years on the blog, I’ve mentioned various ailments from bone spurs growing against my Achilles tendon, elbow tendinitis and etc. It’s part of the deal I guess. The last couple years it’s been bad pain in my left shoulder. My stripping shoulder luckily. The pain was bad enough at this time last year that before heading to Providence Atoll to strip huge flies for GT’s I received a cortisone shot.
The shot worked amazing. I had no pain while in the Seychelles and honestly, by mid-summer I forgot about my ailment. That is until about September. From October to December the shoulder went into a spiral and over the holidays I could hardly move it or sleep on it because of the pain. I contacted the Hayward Orthopedics Dept. and that was the start of figuring this problem out.
I won’t bore you, but after a winter of doing the best I could with PT on my own, I improved. But things still aren’t right so I got an X-ray in February and an MRI last week. Now I finally know. I have a partially torn rotator cuff. To be exact its a partial thickness tear of the anterior aspect articular supraspinatus tendon insertion site.
The Orthopedic Surgeon said I should have him fix it but if I want to hold off its ok. Some people do live with a partial tear. But they pretty much never do anything strenuous with the wounded arm over their heads.
Shoulder surgery is about a six month ordeal. Not fun and not easy. Granny went through this in 2019 and I’m not sure I could deal – especially now because I’d be missing a Wisconsin fishing season and a few good trips I have coming up. So, for now, I’m going to continue strengthening and stretching the shoulder and see if I can continue to improve. And once again, catch me live on Ask About Fly Fishing Internet Radio tomorrow night!
Sorry to hear . Hope you can make it through another season!
Jeff,
Hopefully your arm will show some improvement but you will eventually have to get the rotorcuff surgery.
Have it done during the slowest time of your fishing year – and do like my friend – after surgery he went from fly and spin fishing to trolling for six months – that worked for him.
Tad
I’m committed to make it through this season. Even if I scheduled the surgery it would be awhile. And I’ve been getting by fishing hard this spring. And yes Tad, eventually I will need to get this fixed. But when is my slowest time? Lucky for me there really is none. I’m gonna miss out on some good stuff no matter what. But the reward of being back to almost 100% is high being now I’d rate my shoulder at about 30%!