If you guessed that I added more titanium to my body then you guessed right! OK, so no real net worth increase as titanium implants post mortem aren’t worth anything but it’s still cool 🙂

NOTE: This post is for people with serious shoulder pain, looking at either repair or replacement surgery. I doubt others will find it all that interesting. For me though this is my 5th surgery resulting from sports/fitness damage. Mostly from a lifetime a heavy lifting but no doubt many years of hard core martial arts played a role. Before each surgery I always liked reading others’ experiences. Not to set expectations as everyone will respond differently but it helped me frame what I might be up against. So, here’s mine…

I previously posted about two shoulder surgeries and also about my L4-L5 fusion years ago. All HUGE success stories I happy to say:

• A Tale of Two Shoulders
• Man of Steel, Ha

This shoulder replacement deal is night and day different from shoulder arthroscopic repair. I recall before my 2nd big repair job my surgeon, Dr. Gary Waslewski, telling me that if I keep up with the heavy lifting and keep killing pain with cortisone injections that I’d eventually need a new shoulder. I think my reply was “OK, let’s do it, hit me Doc!!”. I had no desire to slow down because of some potential future event. Well, fast forward many years and here’s what finally led me to replacement:

• Inability to remove my t-shirt without making a grunting noise
• Constant pain
• I couldn’t even buckle my seatbelt with my left hand, it took two arms!
• Crazy lack of range of motion, inability to do anything at the gym overhead
• The list goes on and on…

So what happened? I burned through my cartilage maybe 7 years ago. Bone on bone ever since. It was uncomfortable but what I didn’t realize is that I was slowly grinding away at the bone itself! Specifically the head of my humerus. Nothing punny about that, heh. The irony is that near the end, the only exercise I could do over the last 7 years or so was heavy bench press; the one exercise that mangled my humerus. I had worn it into a singular pattern of movement, anything else just didn’t work. Think if a football in an oval socket trying to move in every direction like a basketball would in a round socket. I was so fed up with one day at the gym I just powered through a hammer strength overhead press right though the pain; tore my rotator nearly in two. They said it was hanging on by a thread. Wonderful. I couldn’t move my arm for days, that was the end of my anatomically correct shoulder.

OK, so lets see repair versus replacement aspects have been for me (results I’m sure will vary):

	Repair	Full Replacement
Post-op pain level	6-8	0-1
Time in sling	6 weeks	2 weeks
Physical Therapy	6 weeks	3 months
Limitation – nothing heavier than a glass of water	first 4 weeks	first 3 months
Able to start strength training	after 6 weeks	after 3 months
Full recovery	after 3-4 months	after 6 months?

Why the big difference? Well, my shoulder replacement surgery, Dr. Amon Ferry, explained it well. Repairs involve anchoring or stitching up random damage in the shoulder and are focused primarily (for me) on soft tissue repair. A replacement is one nice surgical incision followed by some bone work and likely some ligament separation/re-attachment but all of this done surgically. I couldn’t believe that I woke up without any pain and almost immediately got back most of the range of motion I hadn’t had in close to 10 years. I’m 7 weeks out now and have nearly full range of motion, no pain, no discomfort, nothing. Check out the animation, my surgery took all of 90 minutes if you can believe it! That explains the no pain and short sling time, but what’s up with the super long time before lifting more than a glass of water? Simple, see that giant screw going into my shoulder? It needs time for the bone to settle around it or one risks a hairline fracture. That’s a pretty big risk so I am keeping with the restriction religiously!

There is a downside if you’re a heavy lifter like me. The implants won’t last forever and undergo wear and tear with every movement and even more-so when under load. So I’m limited to 35 pounds with one arm. Much higher when using an olympic bar but I don’t know the there limitations yet. Honestly I’m fine with whatever they are. I benched 305 at age 50 and 315 a few years later (both times weighing in under 185 lbs). I’ve already climbed the proverbial lifting mountain already. I still get to climb mountains, they just won’t be as high but every bit as satisfying and fun.

So there you have it. There is “Hope” if you are looking at major shoulder work. I now have the following titanium parts embedded in me and I still don’t set off the alarms at the airport LOL:

• Five 2 inch deck screws
• Two plates
• One approximately 4″ titanium railroad spike looking thing
• A nice basketball shaped humerus head to fit my composite socket
• 2 posts in my jaw (broken teeth gritting teeth during heavy lifts)

So what’s next for me? Really no change other than less weight. No plans to lighten up on intensity though, just increase the volume — that’s my plan 😉