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A Wisconsin Golfer's Blog

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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 14

I am subtitling this: “the Tao of Cipher” Last week I was able to play my first full round of golf in over two years.  It was not pretty, but it was so much fun.  I completely chunked about nine shots and I took at least 4 penalties.  I had the absolute best time doing so.  A co-worker and I took a couple business partners out and it was very rewarding to be able to do that again.  All the hard work, patience and time weighing the tough decisions have been to the benefit of playing again wi
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 13

I find it interesting that early this week I was standing on the spot shown in the photo which is the 18th hole of my local disc golf course and an incredibly heavy feeling of déjà vu came over me.  It was as if I were standing there for the first time I had ever played that disc golf course, feeling the weight of the injury and trying to find something to fill the void in which the injury left me with.  It cracked me up a bit that back then I could not even throw the disc half way up the hill,
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 12

I made it back from our Florida trip on Tuesday night.  It was great to get away from my crazy work schedule for a bit, and experience a little sun after the winter here in Wisconsin.  We were able to go the beach and do a little fishing as well.  My son and I both connected with Snook(bass like but longer fish) which is a lot of fun.  Any time you can catch a Snook from the beach with an artificial lure, it is a very rewarding experience.   On my lunch break this Wednesday I decided to hea
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 11

It is pretty incredible for me to realize that this Sunday, April 9th, will mark two years to the day since I was injured while playing golf down in Florida.  I have not been able to play a round of golf since.  It may seem to some that this is a pretty terrible thing for someone who loves the game of golf.  As I have mentioned in the earlier blogs, it was pretty tough at first.  I got through that season.  The past two years have changed me in so many good ways and I am very thankful for what h
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 10

Aug-December 2016 - I decided to take the rest of the year off from worrying about anything golf related.  I had a lot planned for the rest of that summer and fall.  I continued to play disc golf.  I also played in a tournament later that summer.  I enjoyed doing that and it was a great experience.  I like playing in these tournaments because it is how you get an official player rating in disc golf.  A player rating in disc golf is similar to a golf handicap but is also very different at the sam
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 9

March-July, 2016 - I did not know exactly what to expect when starting physical therapy.  I have been lucky enough in the past not to need it due to any other injuries or procedures.  One of the first things we tried to do was to check the range of motion.  I simply held my arm on the table and tried to rotate the wrist back and forth, palm up and palm down.  I was very surprised, as I think the PT was as well, that I only had about 10 degrees of wrist rotation available to me at first.  I
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 8

February, 2016 - The first afternoon home from the surgery was not too bad.  The meds were kicked in pretty strong and I had very little pain.  The toughest thing that day was just the annoyance of having to hold my arm up in the air to keep the swelling down.  I did not walk around much as the weight of the cast was enough that I decided to lie down and elevate the arm for the most part.  The next day however, things were much different. The wrist area was not really in much pain, but my left s
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 7

February 2nd of 2016 came quickly and I was ready to get the surgery over with.  I was a bit nervous about the procedure as this was my first real surgery.  I really did not know what was going to happen when I woke up and how difficult recovery was going to be. The doctor had explained to me what was going to happen.  He was going to do an endoscopy procedure in the wrist first to look at the damage, as the MRI results did not really show everything that he wanted to know before beginning
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 6

I had a lot of fun playing disc golf, but the fall of 2015 came quickly and I started to prepare for an attempt at swinging the sticks again.  I went to the range in the middle part of September and tried some very light swinging.  I was not hitting the ball far at all, but it seemed to go pretty well.  I was just taking half swings with some wedges and a 7 iron.  I was happy with the results and so the next week that I went out I decided to try and use a couple long irons.  As soon as I started
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 5

The struggle of not being able to play anymore was tough during the summer of 2015.  I felt pretty helpless about the situation and was not really sure what to do.  I began to slowly unplug golf from my life.  I stopped watching and talking about golf as much as possible. Basically I tried to eliminate anything that would cause me to think about not being able to play golf.  I took a necessary break from posting on this site for a while as well.  There are a few people from TST that continually
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 4

I was pretty convinced that my problem was a rare and poorly documented sports injury called ECU subluxation.  The ECU tendon is the tendon that sits in a groove on the outside of the Ulna bone and is covered by a thin sheath that holds it in place.  ECU subluxation or dislocation of the tendon happens when that sheath tears or stretches and the tendon itself becomes dislocated from the bone.   Here are a couple resources on the injury.  http://radsource.us/extensor-carpi-ulnaris
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 3

After returning home I made an appointment with an orthopedic doctor who specialized in hand and wrist treatment.  He did an x-ray to rule out the possibility of any broken bones in the hand or near the wrist.  The x-ray showed that there were no bone problems in the wrist.  The doctor thought I likely had some kind of tendon problem near the wrist.  He really did not know or maybe want to say what at that time.  He thought I should first try to immobilize the wrist and put it in a custom splint
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 2

The popping sound I heard was quite loud and the pain was strong enough that my initial reaction was to think I actually broke the ulna bone(the outside arm bone) near the wrist.  I tried to pick my club back up and the nerves in my arm near the wrist were on fire.  I could not even grip the club at all with the left hand.  I had actually hit the ball a bit thin and the shot flared out to the right about 40 yards right and short of the green and I missed the water.  When I made it up to the ball
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Reflections on Golf and Life After ECU Injury - Part 1

I have always enjoyed golf, but in 2010 at the age of 30 I discovered a passion for it.  I moved to the Milwaukee area that year from Minneapolis and golf became much more affordable to me at the same time. I started playing a little more and at the end of the year I set out to see how much I could improve my play during my 30s.  I started the journey in 2011 at around a 15 handicap.  It may have been a bit late in life to try something like this, but it was a way to challenge myself and also en
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