My Swing (Jetfan1983)

[JetFan1983]

Wow, crazy it's been nearly two years since I updated this thread. I'm dangerously close to the "this thread is over two years old, Jackass, are you sure you want to bump it" banner warning. This is long overdue.

OK, some good news and bad news regarding my golf health, and unfortunately, it's mostly bad news. Thankfully this isn't life threatening at least haha. 

A little background:

I shut down golf for good in September 2016 to finally heal a bunch of injuries. The primary injury I was focused on healing was tendinosis of the left triceps tendon, which I first got all the way back in November of 2011. I had played through it for nearly five years, but ultimately decided that if I didn't stop activities and focus on rehabbing it at some point soon, it may never heal. Through lots of rehab, rest, ice, heat, massage, stretching and a PRP injection, I'm happy to say this injury finally went away, confirmed with an MRI which showed that the tendon had returned to full health, or as close to full health as one can get when recovering from this type of injury. Yay.

Now the bad news. I have bigger fish to fry right now. The MRI also revealed that I have tennis elbow, or lateral epicondylitis, which is really just tendinosis of the lateral epicondyle tendon. The good news here is that the condition is mild, and no older than a year. I got a PRP injection for it a little over two weeks ago, so I'm assuming it's "progressing nicely" to use a Tiger term. With time and little rehab, this one should be fine in a few months or so. It's not very painful either, so I'm not terribly worried about this. 

Here's the really shitty part of what I'm dealing with though. My left shoulder is pretty f**king f**ked up right now, with multiple issues. 

1) My rotator cuff is impinged with moderate tendinosis in the supraspinatus tendon and mild tendinosis in the infraspinatus tendon. I got a PRP injection into the supraspinatus on the same day I got my tennis elbow injected, so that should help accelerate the healing of the tendinopathy, but it's still painful as hell. I did my homework with PRP, and while this treatment has questionable results with a lot of injuries, it works best with tendinosis as this condition is essentially a chronic degeneration of a tendon with no inflammation. A PRP injection really helps reignite inflammation, and also injects valuable platelets which further assist in healing. Plus, I've had good results with it already, so I went back to the well here. 

2) I have partial tearing of the labrum, but I was told that this was probably fine as a lot of people have this problem and it tends to be asymptomatic and not anything I have to worry about. Fingers crossed on that one.

3) There's some damage to the bursa, so the surgeon injected this with PRP as well, also on the same day as the tennis elbow and suprapinatus injections. He said the PRP would filter throughout the rest of the rotator cuff with this injection, so again, I'm hoping for the best here.

4) This one is the one that really f**king sucks. I have adhesive capsulitis as well, or "frozen shoulder." This injury takes anywhere from 18 months to several years to heal, but typically people heal in two years. I've lost at least 65% of the range of motion, and movement is extremely painful. It's difficult to sleep at night, and well, life generally just all around sucks right now. 

This injury is classified in three stages (from Wikipedia), and as someone who has this, I can tell you that this description is pretty damn accurate:

• Stage one: The "freezing" or painful stage, which may last from six weeks to nine months, and in which the patient has a slow onset of pain. As the pain worsens, the shoulder loses motion.^[4]
• Stage two: The "frozen" or adhesive stage is marked by a slow improvement in pain but the stiffness remains. This stage generally lasts from four to nine months.
• Stage three: The "thawing" or recovery, when shoulder motion slowly returns toward normal. This generally lasts from 5 to 26 months.

I first experienced shoulder problems in June of 2016, but really didn't think much of it for the first few months. But it's amazing how even after I finally stopped playing in September, the range of motion incrementally got worse and worse with each passing week to the point now where I can barely move the damn thing. It's literally like a block of cement right now. This description from this radiology site really describes what I went through when I was initially injured, how people who gets this tend to not see a doctor for several months because of what it feels like in the beginning. The funny thing is, I did see a surgeon just two weeks after first injuring it, and he sent me home saying I'd be fine. Oops. I returned a few months later obviously, but this time, to a different surgeon. 

Now unfortunately, there are some that say that stage three can last up to three years, but who the hell knows. If I had to guess, I'm still somewhere between stage one and two as my range of motion has progressively gotten worse each day over the last nine months. Who knows when this will end. Frankly, it's probably best that I don't drive myself crazy thinking about all the what ifs. 

Granted, it's possible the PRP injections I got could help with this as there was one very limited study showing it helps accelerate the healing of capsulitis. While I did not get injected directly into the capsule, the bursa surrounds it, so I dunno. I guess this is something I'll have to discuss with my doctor the next time I see him.

But hey, if there are any positives that have come out of all this crap then it's that I've become quite the unlicensed expert of the anatomy of the shoulder. And in keeping with my endless curiosity to satisfy the whys in all this, to further my understanding of capsulitis, I just had to go on Rotoworld to see if any pro athletes have dealt with this injury, and (hopefully) ultimately recovered from it... and, well, the results I got were not so good. Only two pros have had this that Rotoworld knows of, both were MLB pitchers, and both had their careers ended by it: 

http://www.rotoworld.com/player/mlb/3006/scott-linebrinkscott

http://www.rotoworld.com/recent/mlb/1179/tyler-johnson

RIP Scott Linebrink and Tyler Johnson. The good news is that I don't need to be on an MLB level of talent to return to golf one day, but this is certainly not exactly what I wanted to read haha. Frankly though, knowing what I know about this injury and how long it takes to recover, I can see why an MLB team would just give up on someone dealing with this. 

Anyway, I wanted to update my thread on where I currently am with my injuries. Hopefully I can return to golf one day. It's currently been almost ten months since I last played. My goal once everything heals is to get back in the gym and rebuild my body for at least three months before touching a club again, so we'll have to tack that onto the time frame as well.

Here's to hoping I can play golf again at some point in the next twelve months, but if not, well... I guess there are worse things in life that can happen to a person. 

PS- That was really depressing to write and proof-read. To end on a humorous note, here's a compilation of Tiger F-Bombs for us to laugh at together heheh:

PPS- And high five to me because I still don't have a debilitating prescription drug addiction despite the fact that my doctors are really, really trying to give me one. I guess this counts as good news too!   Sorry, I probably shouldn't joke about this one. Get well soon, Tiger. You've helped me understand that I should only use these pills on the very worst days. 

Edited July 9, 2017 by JetFan1983

[boogielicious]

22 hours ago, JetFan1983 said:

Wow, crazy it's been nearly two years since I updated this thread. I'm dangerously close to the "this thread is over two years old, Jackass, are you sure you want to bump it" banner warning. This is long overdue.

OK, some good news and bad news regarding my golf health, and unfortunately, it's mostly bad news. Thankfully this isn't life threatening at least haha. 

A little background:

I shut down golf for good in September 2016 to finally heal a bunch of injuries. The primary injury I was focused on healing was tendinosis of the left triceps tendon, which I first got all the way back in November of 2011. I had played through it for nearly five years, but ultimately decided that if I didn't stop activities and focus on rehabbing it at some point soon, it may never heal. Through lots of rehab, rest, ice, heat, massage, stretching and a PRP injection, I'm happy to say this injury finally went away, confirmed with an MRI which showed that the tendon had returned to full health, or as close to full health as one can get when recovering from this type of injury. Yay.

Now the bad news. I have bigger fish to fry right now. The MRI also revealed that I have tennis elbow, or lateral epicondylitis, which is really just tendinosis of the lateral epicondyle tendon. The good news here is that the condition is mild, and no older than a year. I got a PRP injection for it a little over two weeks ago, so I'm assuming it's "progressing nicely" to use a Tiger term. With time and little rehab, this one should be fine in a few months or so. It's not very painful either, so I'm not terribly worried about this. 

Here's the really shitty part of what I'm dealing with though. My left shoulder is pretty f**king f**ked up right now, with multiple issues. 

1) My rotator cuff is impinged with moderate tendinosis in the supraspinatus tendon and mild tendinosis in the infraspinatus tendon. I got a PRP injection into the supraspinatus on the same day I got my tennis elbow injected, so that should help accelerate the healing of the tendinopathy, but it's still painful as hell. I did my homework with PRP, and while this treatment has questionable results with a lot of injuries, it works best with tendinosis as this condition is essentially a chronic degeneration of a tendon with no inflammation. A PRP injection really helps reignite inflammation, and also injects valuable platelets which further assist in healing. Plus, I've had good results with it already, so I went back to the well here. 

2) I have partial tearing of the labrum, but I was told that this was probably fine as a lot of people have this problem and it tends to be asymptomatic and not anything I have to worry about. Fingers crossed on that one.

3) There's some damage to the bursa, so the surgeon injected this with PRP as well, also on the same day as the tennis elbow and suprapinatus injections. He said the PRP would filter throughout the rest of the rotator cuff with this injection, so again, I'm hoping for the best here.

4) This one is the one that really f**king sucks. I have adhesive capsulitis as well, or "frozen shoulder." This injury takes anywhere from 18 months to several years to heal, but typically people heal in two years. I've lost at least 65% of the range of motion, and movement is extremely painful. It's difficult to sleep at night, and well, life generally just all around sucks right now. 

This injury is classified in three stages (from Wikipedia), and as someone who has this, I can tell you that this description is pretty damn accurate:

• Stage one: The "freezing" or painful stage, which may last from six weeks to nine months, and in which the patient has a slow onset of pain. As the pain worsens, the shoulder loses motion.^[4]
• Stage two: The "frozen" or adhesive stage is marked by a slow improvement in pain but the stiffness remains. This stage generally lasts from four to nine months.
• Stage three: The "thawing" or recovery, when shoulder motion slowly returns toward normal. This generally lasts from 5 to 26 months.

I first experienced shoulder problems in June of 2016, but really didn't think much of it for the first few months. But it's amazing how even after I finally stopped playing in September, the range of motion incrementally got worse and worse with each passing week to the point now where I can barely move the damn thing. It's literally like a block of cement right now. This description from this radiology site really describes what I went through when I was initially injured, how people who gets this tend to not see a doctor for several months because of what it feels like in the beginning. The funny thing is, I did see a surgeon just two weeks after first injuring it, and he sent me home saying I'd be fine. Oops. I returned a few months later obviously, but this time, to a different surgeon. 

Now unfortunately, there are some that say that stage three can last up to three years, but who the hell knows. If I had to guess, I'm still somewhere between stage one and two as my range of motion has progressively gotten worse each day over the last nine months. Who knows when this will end. Frankly, it's probably best that I don't drive myself crazy thinking about all the what ifs. 

Granted, it's possible the PRP injections I got could help with this as there was one very limited study showing it helps accelerate the healing of capsulitis. While I did not get injected directly into the capsule, the bursa surrounds it, so I dunno. I guess this is something I'll have to discuss with my doctor the next time I see him.

But hey, if there are any positives that have come out of all this crap then it's that I've become quite the unlicensed expert of the anatomy of the shoulder. And in keeping with my endless curiosity to satisfy the whys in all this, to further my understanding of capsulitis, I just had to go on Rotoworld to see if any pro athletes have dealt with this injury, and (hopefully) ultimately recovered from it... and, well, the results I got were not so good. Only two pros have had this that Rotoworld knows of, both were MLB pitchers, and both had their careers ended by it: 

http://www.rotoworld.com/player/mlb/3006/scott-linebrinkscott

http://www.rotoworld.com/recent/mlb/1179/tyler-johnson

RIP Scott Linebrink and Tyler Johnson. The good news is that I don't need to be on an MLB level of talent to return to golf one day, but this is certainly not exactly what I wanted to read haha. Frankly though, knowing what I know about this injury and how long it takes to recover, I can see why an MLB team would just give up on someone dealing with this. 

Anyway, I wanted to update my thread on where I currently am with my injuries. Hopefully I can return to golf one day. It's currently been almost ten months since I last played. My goal once everything heals is to get back in the gym and rebuild my body for at least three months before touching a club again, so we'll have to tack that onto the time frame as well.

Here's to hoping I can play golf again at some point in the next twelve months, but if not, well... I guess there are worse things in life that can happen to a person. 

PS- That was really depressing to write and proof-read. To end on a humorous note, here's a compilation of Tiger F-Bombs for us to laugh at together heheh:

PPS- And high five to me because I still don't have a debilitating prescription drug addiction despite the fact that my doctors are really, really trying to give me one. I guess this counts as good news too!   Sorry, I probably shouldn't joke about this one. Get well soon, Tiger. You've helped me understand that I should only use these pills on the very worst days. 

Yikes! I hope you recover fast. I had frozen shoulder after my rotator cuff surgery. One thing that helped a lot was pool therapy in a hot pool. I was lucky my mother was a PTA who specialized in this. But basically any hot tub would help. The hot water loosens the joint and then you can work on stretching the shoulder improving ROM. If you have access, try this. Otherwise hot packs can help, but aren't as effective.

The second thing that helped was one of those assisted chin up machines. After I got more range from the hot therapy and regular PT, I would slowly stretch the shoulder using the max weight on the machine and just hang using both arm. I proceeded slowly at first. I did this while getting regular PT and the hot pool stuff. It became part of my routine. Eventually I got full vertical range, about 6 weeks and was able to hang fully vertical.

The rest of the range came from keeping up with my PT exercises and stretching daily, sometime 3 to 4 times a day. It took about 2 years to get it so I could get my wrist to the middle of my back, but I could golf after 3 months.

Best of luck.

[billchao]

Hope you have a speedy and full recovery @JetFan1983.

[JetFan1983]

2 hours ago, billchao said:

Hope you have a speedy and full recovery @JetFan1983.

Thanks, Bill. This has all been depressing so even a simple reply like this helps my psyche out. Appreciate it! 

3 hours ago, boogielicious said:

Yikes! I hope you recover fast. I had frozen shoulder after my rotator cuff surgery. One thing that helped a lot was pool therapy in a hot pool. I was lucky my mother was a PTA who specialized in this. But basically any hot tub would help. The hot water loosens the joint and then you can work on stretching the shoulder improving ROM. If you have access, try this. Otherwise hot packs can help, but aren't as effective.

The second thing that helped was one of those assisted chin up machines. After I got more range from the hot therapy and regular PT, I would slowly stretch the shoulder using the max weight on the machine and just hang using both arm. I proceeded slowly at first. I did this while getting regular PT and the hot pool stuff. It became part of my routine. Eventually I got full vertical range, about 6 weeks and was able to hang fully vertical.

The rest of the range came from keeping up with my PT exercises and stretching daily, sometime 3 to 4 times a day. It took about 2 years to get it so I could get my wrist to the middle of my back, but I could golf after 3 months.

Best of luck.

Wow, thanks for the awesome post, Scott! Sorry I've been quiet on the Super Group, I actually shut my cell down for a while. I'll turn it back on in a few weeks. I know people think I'm crazy. Love you guys!

Anyway, this info is obviously extremely useful to me. I also did a site search the other day and noticed you also dealt with an impingement. Was the frozen shoulder and impingement going on at the same time? 

What complicates things for me is how the shoulder has multiple injuries. I'm definitely going to find a new PT as well since I wasn't 100% happy with my previous one.

One thing that might have helped me was that I did a whopping 70 PT sessions between October and March on my elbow, and each time I would go, I would spend a good 10-20 minutes working out my shoulder as well, sort of on my own. I think doing this actually helped prevent a total shoulder freeze. At the time, I was undiagnosed, so I had no idea what I was dealing with. It wasn't until I stopped PT to recovery from a PRP injection that the shoulder really started to freeze, around late March. It's possible the freeze has stopped at this point, and that I'm in stage two, but I'm not entirely sure. 

Regardless, I do have a hot tub, and I'm gonna hop in it for twenty minutes later today, per your advice. I really also want to get some stretches going, but it's only been 19 days since my double PRP injection in the bursa and supraspinatus, so the whole area is still tender. That said, I still am doing light stretching for it, mostly because it's hard to just sit around and do nothing. It's debatable whether I should wait another 2-3 weeks before doing it. 

That's great news though that you could golf after only three months. Definitely a relief to hear that with all this shitty info that it will take me years. Huge weight off my shoulders...wow, that was an unintentionally terrible pun 

First thing, I'm definitely getting into the hot tub today, and I'll start by doing some basic movements and see how far I can push the shoulder. External rotation is pretty much nil right now so this will take a while. In the meantime, I unfortunately probably should be resting a lot too. PRP, while great for getting rid of tendinopathies, is somewhat complicating the rehab process at the moment. 

I appreciate you taking the time share that really important info with me as I admittedly am clueless still. It's a shame I can only give your post one rep point. 

I'm sure I'll be an expert by the end of all this too, particularly after all the PT I'm going to do. Hopefully I can get into the PT place that Jack Nicklaus uses, which is only like five minutes from me. Fingers crossed. It's supposedly pretty knowledgeable. 

Edited July 10, 2017 by JetFan1983

[boogielicious]

2 hours ago, JetFan1983 said:

Thanks, Bill. This has all been depressing so even a simple reply like this helps my psyche out. Appreciate it! 

Wow, thanks for the awesome post, Scott! Sorry I've been quiet on the Super Group, I actually shut my cell down for a while. I'll turn it back on in a few weeks. I know people think I'm crazy. Love you guys!

Anyway, this info is obviously extremely useful to me. I also did a site search the other day and noticed you also dealt with an impingement. Was the frozen shoulder and impingement going on at the same time? 

What complicates things for me is how the shoulder has multiple injuries. I'm definitely going to find a new PT as well since I wasn't 100% happy with my previous one.

One thing that might have helped me was that I did a whopping 70 PT sessions between October and March on my elbow, and each time I would go, I would spend a good 10-20 minutes working out my shoulder as well, sort of on my own. I think doing this actually helped prevent a total shoulder freeze. At the time, I was undiagnosed, so I had no idea what I was dealing with. It wasn't until I stopped PT to recovery from a PRP injection that the shoulder really started to freeze, around late March. It's possible the freeze has stopped at this point, and that I'm in stage two, but I'm not entirely sure. 

Regardless, I do have a hot tub, and I'm gonna hop in it for twenty minutes later today, per your advice. I really also want to get some stretches going, but it's only been 19 days since my double PRP injection in the bursa and supraspinatus, so the whole area is still tender. That said, I still am doing light stretching for it, mostly because it's hard to just sit around and do nothing. It's debatable whether I should wait another 2-3 weeks before doing it. 

That's great news though that you could golf after only three months. Definitely a relief to hear that with all this shitty info that it will take me years. Huge weight off my shoulders...wow, that was an unintentionally terrible pun 

First thing, I'm definitely getting into the hot tub today, and I'll start by doing some basic movements and see how far I can push the shoulder. External rotation is pretty much nil right now so this will take a while. In the meantime, I unfortunately probably should be resting a lot too. PRP, while great for getting rid of tendinopathies, is somewhat complicating the rehab process at the moment. 

I appreciate you taking the time share that really important info with me as I admittedly am clueless still. It's a shame I can only give your post one rep point. 

I'm sure I'll be an expert by the end of all this too, particularly after all the PT I'm going to do. Hopefully I can get into the PT place that Jack Nicklaus uses, which is only like five minutes from me. Fingers crossed. It's supposedly pretty knowledgeable. 

My issue was a cyst. They thought I had a tear, but when they went in, it wasn't torn. They removed the cyst and cleaned up the area. But any surgery in there can result in freezing if you don't get mobile enough after. 

It takes a while and you'll feel like you've had setbacks, but it is more like plateaus. 

Another one I remember doing in therapy and after was tossing a rubber ball against a wall. I used that with light tosses to warm up before doing strengthening exercises.

Always keep the weights light and just do more reps. And never do military presses. My PT used to say when she saw guys at the gym doing them, she knew she'd have patience in a few years!

keep us posted on it. 

[JetFan1983]

1 hour ago, boogielicious said:

My issue was a cyst. They thought I had a tear, but when they went in, it wasn't torn. They removed the cyst and cleaned up the area. But any surgery in there can result in freezing if you don't get mobile enough after. 

It takes a while and you'll feel like you've had setbacks, but it is more like plateaus. 

Another one I remember doing in therapy and after was tossing a rubber ball against a wall. I used that with light tosses to warm up before doing strengthening exercises.

Always keep the weights light and just do more reps. And never do military presses. My PT used to say when she saw guys at the gym doing them, she knew she'd have patience in a few years!

keep us posted on it. 

Well you were right about the hot tub. After about five minutes of soaking, my external rotation went from a max of 10 degrees to like 45, with little to no pain. Did some light stretching otherwise, but mostly just sat there for 20 minutes. 

Gonna treat things fairly conservatively over the next 2-4 weeks as I continue to recover from PRP, but will get my butt back into PT soon after that. Appreciate the assistance, and obviously I'm all ears for future tips you may recall. 

Thanks again. Things are looking less gloomy today!

[JetFan1983]

Not including today (where I might take the day off from it), I've done six hot tub sessions over the last seven days, at twenty minute intervals, focusing on light stretching. I can confidently say it's been great, and my range of motion has improved at least 5%.* Pain has gone down a good 5-8% as well, I'd say. Thanks for the advice @boogielicious!!!

I was thinking about taking the day off from it today, but Scott, were you taking days off? Can I do this every day? I have no idea if it's bad to get in a hot tub every day or not. I've read about something called hot tub lung, which is apparently a thing, but this is an outdoor tub, so it should be okay. 

Regardless, this has been great, and I'm eager to find out where I'll be with my shoulder by September. Solid progress so far. I'll take any improvement at this point as there had been exactly none over the past few months. 

It's still going to be a long time til I can golf again unfortunately. I really want all these things to heal before returning, and I know tennis elbow and rotator cuff tendinosis both take many, many months to heal. Even though I've been shelved for ten months, I didn't really understand exactly what I was dealing with until several weeks ago. That said, I seem to be on a good path now, as the hot tub is also good for tennis elbow and the rotator cuff. So we'll see what happens. The arrow is officially pointing up. Positivity is actually logical now. 

*These percentages are when the shoulder is cold, like late at night or pre-hot tub for the day. In the tub, ROM improves a good 75% at least and gradually decreases in the hours after the session. 

Edited July 17, 2017 by JetFan1983

[nevets88]

Coming to this a little late, but man, sorry to hear about this. Wish I could be more helpful, hang in there!

[JetFan1983]

56 minutes ago, nevets88 said:

Coming to this a little late, but man, sorry to hear about this. Wish I could be more helpful, hang in there!

Thanks, Steve. Appreciate it! Yea, it's tough. Ten months gone already. Still not close to @cipher's record of two years, but still pretty frustrating. Things are finally progressing though, albeit slowly. Scott's advice has been big so far. 

[14ledo81]

Hope you get better @JetFan1983.

[JetFan1983]

10 minutes ago, 14ledo81 said:

Hope you get better @JetFan1983.

Appreciate it, Matt. Still checking the Caring Bridge site regularly to keep up on Tyler's progress. He's definitely eight million times tougher than I am, that's for sure. 

[cipher]

1 hour ago, JetFan1983 said:

Thanks, Steve. Appreciate it! Yea, it's tough. Ten months gone already. Still not close to @cipher's record of two years, but still pretty frustrating. Things are finally progressing though, albeit slowly. Scott's advice has been big so far. 

Yeah, but these things have been off and on for you for so long.  It would be great to see a long period of no injuries for you.  I really hope and believe you can get there.  

[boogielicious]

3 hours ago, JetFan1983 said:

Not including today (where I might take the day off from it), I've done six hot tub sessions over the last seven days, at twenty minute intervals, focusing on light stretching. I can confidently say it's been great, and my range of motion has improved at least 5%.* Pain has gone down a good 5-8% as well, I'd say. Thanks for the advice @boogielicious!!!

I was thinking about taking the day off from it today, but Scott, were you taking days off? Can I do this every day? I have no idea if it's bad to get in a hot tub every day or not. I've read about something called hot tub lung, which is apparently a thing, but this is an outdoor tub, so it should be okay. 

Regardless, this has been great, and I'm eager to find out where I'll be with my shoulder by September. Solid progress so far. I'll take any improvement at this point as there had been exactly none over the past few months. 

It's still going to be a long time til I can golf again unfortunately. I really want all these things to heal before returning, and I know tennis elbow and rotator cuff tendinosis both take many, many months to heal. Even though I've been shelved for ten months, I didn't really understand exactly what I was dealing with until several weeks ago. That said, I seem to be on a good path now, as the hot tub is also good for tennis elbow and the rotator cuff. So we'll see what happens. The arrow is officially pointing up. Positivity is actually logical now. 

*These percentages are when the shoulder is cold, like late at night or pre-hot tub for the day. In the tub, ROM improves a good 75% at least and gradually decreases in the hours after the session. 

If you've pushed it too much then a day off can help. But if you've gone gradual, I would keep going. I couldn't do it every day. I'll ask my mom, who was the pool therapy expert. 

[boogielicious]

Checked with the expert. You can do it daily with no issues. 

[JetFan1983]

3 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

Checked with the expert. You can do it daily with no issues. 

 

25 minutes ago, boogielicious said:

If you've pushed it too much then a day off can help. But if you've gone gradual, I would keep going. I couldn't do it every day. I'll ask my mom, who was the pool therapy expert. 

Ahh, thanks, Scott and family. Appreciate all the assistance here. 

46 minutes ago, cipher said:

Yeah, but these things have been off and on for you for so long.  It would be great to see a long period of no injuries for you.  I really hope and believe you can get there.  

Yea you're right about that. I actually found out that I was vitamin D3 deficient recently, so adding that supplement might have some benefits long term for me in the injury department. I think there's a decent chance the tendon issues have been at least partially linked to that, but I don't really know. Whether they are or not though, I do feel a heckuva lot better lately, so that's a plus. Appreciate the reply, Nate. It's been fun following your 2017 season on your swing thread. 

[b101]

Only just seen these updates and gutted to hear about all your issues. Keep us posted and hope you get on the road to at least some recovery

[JetFan1983]

I'm hesitant to say "I'm back," but for all intents and purposes, I kind of am 

Granted, I'm in so much pain right now writing this post, I probably can't hit balls for like two weeks or something, but this is just a reality I'm living in right now. The good news is, I'm trending in the right direction with my recovery, so over the next few years, it should get a bit better each week. But I don't want to jinx anything. 

 

I played my first round back a few weeks ago, shooting 95 from 6199 yards at Abacoa. 

You'll notice a bottle of wine in the top left corner. Yea, chronic pain sucks. It took three weeks for the pain to subside after this round. I used to never drink too, but now, a couple glasses of wine is better than more oxycodone and vicodin. 2.5+ years of chronic pain and counting takes its toll. 

 

I'll be alright with this stuff, don't worry. Pain killers are a necessary evil to getting through chronic pain, and I'm thankful I had a doctor who understood this. I resisted taking anything for over a year, but I broke down eventually. I can honestly say that they helped me get through this.

That aside, as soon as the pain went away from that round, I went back to Abacoa on Friday and filmed my swing to see what the hell it looked like after all this time. Here it is: A face-on pitching wedge, first of the day.

Maybe you noticed how fat I got since 2016? Yea, comfort eating helps too. 

So yea... first observation was, "yikes." Followed by, "I probably don't need to see a DTL view," followed by, "Christ, my hips don't effing slide anymore."

So after some practice, I finally got this picture about an hour later:

Also, the ball position was too far back so I moved it forward. This 2nd swing is a six iron. A bit better. Ball probably needs to be a bit more forward here too.

Afterwards, I went into the clubhouse to get some lunch when I ran into Brian Creghan, who IMO is a good teacher. We caught up on the last few years, and he was genuinely happy to see me. I showed him video of my swing, and he said if I wanted he could give me a free half an hour after lunch, so being how I'm not totally stupid, I accepted right away. 

He agreed I needed to slide my hips and shit, but also told me to swing my arms across my chest faster relative to the pivot. I agreed right away. 

 

Then he has me do this old Mac drill where I hit a bunch of balls in a row without thinking much. I'd never heard of this, but it was pretty cool how it did unlock some better sequencing right away.

 After that, I practiced it on my own for a little while before heading home, mixing in some slow-steady drills that I learned from Erik and Mike. It was a great day, the first where I got to work on my swing in a very, very long time. 

As you may have guessed, the pain the next day sucked, and well, I'm feeling it still today, four days later. It stinks, but it is what it is. I can't make my shoulders worse by doing this, and from what I understand about this disease, I'm actually helping it in the long run by golfing.  

Also, maybe you noticed my limited range of motion as well. I can't swing past A3 much. I can't externally rotate my shoulder beyond 90 degrees either. I cant raise my arms above shoulder height. I seem to have just barely enough to make a functional swing, but it's really hard to generate much speed. I probably averaged like 215 yards with driver in that lone round I played, and that's with a modern Callaway driver that everyone seems to hit 290+ these days. 

Then again, it's hard for me to give a shit about score or distance or anything like that right now. It's unbelievable to be back. It was emotional after that round. I had a hard time containing myself in the car on the ride home. I'm pretty thankful to be able to get out there again. I hope my health can continue to get better each day and that this isn't a one time thing. The last 2.5 years have forced me to realize how lucky I was to be able to play this game in the first place. So much in your life has to be right for it to happen.

Thanks for reading, and hopefully I have more of these to share here over the next few years. I feel pretty lucky right now just to be able to write one. 

Edited December 18, 2018 by JetFan1983
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@JetFan1983

Great post! One stupid question, are you icing immediately after the round or practice? If not, do it. Also, there is a technique called ice massage that can target better and faster. Take a paper cup and freeze water in it. Peel back the paper and massage the spot for about 3-5 minutes if you can do it comfortably. This targets inflammation. Shoulders are harder to do, but it is worth trying. You may already be doing this, but I thought I'd ask.

Second, your A4 is the same as my A4! So you have the range of a 58 year old from Boston.