Time for healing.

[Zman]

What body parts need fixing or healing for next season?

[Rednucleus]

Left hip, left shoulder down to elbow; feet hurt too. Sucks being sixty but regular skiing makes it all feel better!

[Zman]

@Rednucleus I'm almost 65. Don't worry, it gets better.

[thager]

Left knee needs replacement but life keeps getting in the way/

[MISkier]

Plantar fasciitis in both feet. Right foot is nearly healed. Left foot is stubborn.

 

Right distal bicep tendon is painful at elbow. Some pain in the bicep itself, especially when flexing it, and additional light medial epicondylitis as well. Significant loss of bicep strength on that side.

 

Everything else is good.

 

Age 53.

[LZywicki1]

Start rehab on my left shoulder Monday.

[The_MS]

Finely on my way back to getting normal after a year of prostate, knee surgery and thyroid issues. Was at 150 lbs and on my way back to 175.

 

[jayski]

@MS all celebrated next year with a trip to Cottonwood to hang out and visit with @skidawg, @teammalibu and the rest of us!

[T_C]

@thager when your knee gets in the way of life it will be time

Mine is scheduled for Dec 12

[thager]

@T_C Wanted to do it in Oct., but an upgrade at work scheduled for Dec. just got pushed back.

[david_quail]

More like “which ones don’t?”

[Stevie Boy]

It appears I have some sort of issue with my neck, my arms keep going numb my little finger hurts a fair bit, apparently the xray shows some changes, MRI this Monday hoping some physio might sort the problem, not getting a lot of info at the moment.

[Jody_Seal]

Where to start ?

Broken ankle in july, left hip flared up causing back pain. Right knee commonly sore. Right ankle commonly sore. Did I mention back pain? Left shoulder still makes noise and minor soreness from a fall out of a tree 2 years ago. Since hurricane have probably lost a quart of blood from working around the house clearing brush and trees.

Dealing with insurance company has left me with a headache!

This week had a cedar wood shard fly out of my planer and embed itself into my hand.

Meh! Could be worse!

[dchristman]

@Jody_Seal You are right about that ... could be worse. I for one am happy to be alive with the potential to ski come spring!

 

[thager]

Glad you are on road to recovery! I haven't seen zippers like that since my dad had open heart surgery years ago. You have got to be one tough S.O.B!!!!!

[Jetsetr]

I’m just glad to wake up every morning...

Life is short my friends...live large-what ever that means to each of you...

[Stevie Boy]

After MRI looks like some injections, that's going to be a Pain In The Neck ! at least it is not what I thought it was Phew !.

[Fraser]

Had ACL reconstruct and Meniscus "fix" December 7. Feeling really good considering. Need to figure out my skiers elbow for next season too...that one is a pain in the $%&*. Time for a focused PT over the next 5 months.

[vtmecheng]

Waiting for the fusion in my foot to finish healing, then rehab time.

[Stevie Boy]

I hope that anybody that is considering taking up the sport of water skiing is not reading this threat Ha Ha !

Hope all you Guy's and Gals out there doing the hard grind to get well enough to ski next season all the success that you deserve.

[Zman]

@Stevie Boy I wish I would have stated "no pictures". Lol

Yea, this may be scaring away the faint of heart. Although, other threads on here have shown much worse. I have intentionally not posted my ugly ones. :)

[dchristman]

Sorry, @Zman :smile: A picture is worth a thousand words, and I do have a thousand word skiing related story that goes along with it. Of course skiing didn't lead to my condition so it should dissuade no one from doing it. In fact if it wasn't for my passion for skiing, an insightful observation from a driver at a tournament, and an unknowing nudge from a post on BOS I might be in a quite different position right now!

[skidawg]

Not sure if @jayski has a liver that is ready for @MS

[ForrestGump]

Stitches out yesterday. Dealt with scare over clots/DVT, too. But that turned out to be a false alarm, thankfully. I've got 2 more weeks fully non weight bearing on my left foot. After that in a boot for 4 weeks. Then will start rehab.

 

 

 

[thager]

@BoneHead You do know that's your left foot? No wonder you can't dance!!

[DaveD]

@BoneHead that looks like Elephantiasis. ?

[WaterSkier12]

Let’s see Bonehead, ankle scope, Brostrum and great toe cheilectomy?

That’s a lot of surgery at one time on ur “right” foot, hate to see ur left????

[ForrestGump]

Oops. Yes, Left foot. No idea why the hell I typed right. lol

 

@waterskier12 You're close. Add in a chevron osteotomy, too. I was on the table a LONG time. The ATFL was way worse than he expected, as was the cartilage degeneration in my metatarsal joint. He said I made him work as hard as he's had to save for the car accidents or falls from 2+ stories.

[vtmecheng]

@BoneHead, that's some crazy wound where your osteotomy was. Looks like the stitches could have stayed in for a bit longer. Here's what mine looked like when they took stitches out two weeks post op, excuse the marker since I hadn't washed it yet.

 

I've gone through this a couple times now. First was microfracture for a couple holes in the cartilage of my metatarsal head and a closing wedge osteotomy of my toe that was to reduce pressure on that joint. Microfracture worked great, osteotomy was useless since my real problem was a hypermoble first tarsometatarsal joint. That's what I had fused this time along with some bones shaved down that had built up.

 

[ForrestGump]

Yeah, I was leaving town and so we went ahead and pulled them after 2 weeks and used steri-strips so I wouldn't have to wait 4 weeks to remove them.

[vtmecheng]

@BoneHead good luck on your recovery. Feet are slow to heal, be patient. My biggest problem has been finding a good therapist, my last one sucked so I'm trying someone new Monday.

[ForrestGump]

Good luck to you too! Yeah, I've been miserable for 18 months over this. I went into this knowing I would not be putting any real weight on it for 6-8 weeks and that it would probably take 6-9 months to get back to anything close to normal. My doctor initially wanted to separate the ankle and foot surgeries but I convinced him to do them at the same time so that I didn't have 2 recoveries lasting multiple months each.

[WaterSkier12]

Good luck to u!

[TFisher]

Bonehead - I had a lapidus fusion, spring ligament repair, cheilectomy, and gastroc on my left foot about a year and half ago. Your pictures brought back nightmares. Rehab it religiously and be patient. Your story sounds similar to mine, held off surgery for 18 months when I should have just gotten it over with.

 

I was trying to run on it at 7 or 8 months, but it wasn't there yet. When they tell you its fully healed at a year, that wasn't my experience. Mine has continued to improve. I'm stressing the improving part because I was genuinely worried at a year when it still hurt. Just got back from hiking out west and had very little trouble with it.

[vtmecheng]

@TFisher it sounds like we're all in the same boat. The every day hurt so much before the surgery that there were days I passed on walks with my kids. So long as I remember the pain that I had before surgery, I should be ok. 7 weeks in and the pain really isn't bad. I'm only just putting weight on it and that's not painful.

[TFisher]

vtmecheng - I had one of the top doc's in the nation and my PT skis with me and is literally across the street so my care has been excellent. It just takes time. Do the work and keep doing the work.

 

I want to stress, I had several people tell me healing stopped at a year and that wasn't my experience. Maybe if you just want to walk around the grocery store it stops at a year, but if you want to be active, you have to keep working at it. I'm posting because that was the most discouraging part for me thinking that after all that pain, 1 year was as good as it was going to get. For me, I am still noticing improvement in strength and pain level.

[vtmecheng]

@TFisher, I've actually had two previous foot surgeries. They were done by a doc that I now know did not do the correct procedure for my problem, though his actual cutting skills were good because I healed fast and other docs have commented that his osteotomy cuts were perfectly aligned. All that said, the surgeon I had this time I really do trust. I've seen his work on athletic people, they always seem to return strong. That said, I completely agree that healing takes longer than a year and continuing PT after the appointments is critical to a full recovery. That's ok, my alternative would have been complete loss of the cartilage in my great toe so I'll take the prolonged physical exercise.

[ForrestGump]

Man, how did we all end up with such bad feet?!?!

 

@TFisher yes, I went into this with full knowledge. My surgeon did a really good job of educating me on the options, risks, and recovery over the course of the last year as we tried everything to NOT do surgery.

 

The only gripe I have is that the anesthesiologist did a 3 day nerve block pump. Which was awesome. Man, not a bit of pain and I didn't have to pickle myself with opioids to get through the trauma days. Even when the pump ran out and the nerve block wore off, things were pretty easy. But the thing was, they put the nerve block in at 1pm and told me that it would last 2 1/2 days. Not thinking about it at the time, if you start at 1pm then 2 1/2 days is 2-3AM. When that thing ran out at 3am it started beeping like it was a bomb countdown. And in the dark, I couldn't see that there was a plastic cover over the off button. So I had to drag myself out of bed and to the kitchen so my fiance could sleep. I'm in kitchen on my knee scooter with my boxers at my ankles trying to peel about 9 yards of surgical tape off the back of my leg from knee to hip. Couldn't just rip it off because there's about 8 inches of pic line under my skin. And guess what, they didn't shave my leg or tell me to shave my leg in advance. So I had to peel that damn tape off 1 leg hair at a time. It took me 20 minutes to get that damn line out. If the anesthesiologist had walked it I would have bludgeoned him with a knee scooter.

[Orlando76]

 

[vtmecheng]

@Orlando76 has to come in and make us all look like wimps.

[ForrestGump]

And I'm complaining about leg hairs. DUDE, That is GNARLY!

[vtmecheng]

I've had three surgeries in the past three years. Pre-surgery shaving has started to decline in the past few years. It's been found to increase the chance of infection. Unless the area is really hairy and it gets in the way of the incision or stitches, many surgeons not leave hair.

[ForrestGump]

I'm not talking about int he surgery area. This was from behind my knee up to my hip 6 inches wide in tape.

[vtmecheng]

Bet you weren't thinking about your foot hurting while pulling the take off.

[Orlando76]

When I shower I put my cast in a garbage bag, tie it tight, then wrap the seam a few times with duct tape to water tight it. By the time I got home and showering I started shaving the rest of my exposed leg because I was tired of the hair getting pulled. When I was in the hospital they taped anything they could find on the 5th floor to the hairiest part of my already hairy body Just to pull the tape an hour later.

[lpskier]

Whatever you get fixed, you’ll find something else that hurts. I had my left shoulder fixed a year ago. As soon as it stopped hurting, I started limping pretty badly from an injury suffered (slalom skiing) in 1973.

 

On the topic of shoulders, when your doctor tells you it takes a year to recover from rotator cuff/bicep tendon repair, he knows what he is talking about.

[ForrestGump]

I've had a really tough week. 1st and 2nd week were easy. This week has been terribly painful. Looks like either a joint infection or the trauma from surgery and all the meds has induced Gout(I always thought of Gout being old people. LOL). And not in the repaired areas. In the middle toes and midfoot. If my foot had of swelled any larger, it would have given me a nice facelift because all my skin was being stretched down south. lol. They put me on prednisone and an antibiotic for Staf/MSRA and took about a liter of blood to test.

 

I shattered my collarbone into 5 pieces 2 1/2 years ago and it wasn't as painful as my midfoot this week.

[WaterSkier12]

Be careful with stem cells, just saw 12 pts who had the procedure done got infected. Not sure of the exact details though.

[vtmecheng]

@BoneHead I'm sorry you have so much pain and I really hope it isn't an infection. That was my biggest worry going into this surgery. Keep us updated on your progress and try to stay positive.

[ForrestGump]

Things are much better now after 4 days of prednisone and Bactrim. Earlier in the week I could see my foot swell and turn red in that mid foot area over the course of 2-3 minutes. Never seen anything like it. It would be fine one minute, then it would just start growing. And it'd be like that for 12 hours. Then the swelling would just go away. Now, my foot actually looks like a foot and not a big lump. Was able to be up on it in a boot for 12 hours yesterday for the first time in a month.