For those who don’t know, 2 years ago, my son had to be red shirted because he was trying to throw through shoulder pain with little success. Unfortunately, the surgery didn’t take for reasons I’ll speculate on later. IOW, he’s one of the 15% who aren’t fixed.
So, he eventually gave up on baseball, but the pain has been severe enough that he’s had to often take some fairly potent prescription drugs to get some sleep. That’s the reason he went back under the knife, not necessarily to play ball again.
This time, like the last, the surgeon was a very heavy hitter in this area, and one who routinely works on pro and world class athletes from the entire Western US.
As we were in the room waiting for him to be taken to the OR, of course the docs were there making sure everyone understood what they were gonna attempt to do. That is, to look around in there to see if they missed something, and to see if there was further damage from when they went in last time.
During that little visit, the doc explained that it was possible that if there was significant enough ligament and tendon damage to the point where they had to reattach or move things around, it was very likely he’d no longer have the range and motion to get his arm in a position to throw as hard as he once did. His example was for a ML player who threw in the mid 90’s, he’ be lucky to throw at 90 any longer, and much more likely be in the high 80’s range.
The explanation for that was that often the problem with shoulders in P’s is, the entire shoulder capsule gets loose and sloppy, and that’s eventually what causes pain. So, as the boy slipped into the drug induced state of someone heading into the OR, I headed to the waiting room very sad indeed. Not that I was ever expecting to hem him throw in competition again, but sad that he even had to endure this thing for a 2nd time.
A couple hours later, they came and got me, and I had the dubious honor of wiping the drool off his chin, scratching his nose, and worst of all, seeing him in such pain that tears were shed. I’ve lived with a lot of pain for a lot of years, but I’ve never been able to deal with the pain of my children. I know, I’m a whuss!
Anyhoo, the docs came by and I got the news. The first thing was, they found his shoulder capsule completely tight, so they didn’t have to do anything “radical”, which immediately made me feel better.
Then he told me they checked the rotator and labrum, and there was no tear. In fact they could see where the scar tissue had formed where they cleaned up the “fluff” the last time they were in there, and that it looked exactly as they would expect it to if it had healed properly. Now I’m really feelin’ better.
Then he said they did something this time they didn’t do last time. There’s a bone protecting the capsule on top called the acromion which is an extension of the scapula. The shape of that acromion can make a very big difference in what gone on up there, especially for a pitcher.
If that bone is curved too much, its possible for it to impede the movement of the soft tissue in an “over-the-top” motion, and as it happens, there are 3 types of structures. My boy’s is pretty much the type that’s most curved or hooked, which means its more likely to cause a problem than one that isn’t. I sure hope I got that right.
Anyhoo, last time they didn’t touch the bone, but this time shaved some of the end of the spur which might be causing some problems, and which BTW, is why this time the pain is a lot worse after the surgery than it was the last time.
But that’s about the whole story, which of course made me feel both pretty good and somewhat angry at he same time. After all, that’s pretty much the same thing that was said after the last operation, and I said do to the doc. That’s when we started talking in greater depth about likely reasons the surgery didn’t work last time.
Now don’t anyone go getting all PO’d at me for passing on what a pair of top orthos in the country passed on to me.
The last time, he had his surgery in early July, and was told that if everything worked well, he might be able to throw a ball, not pitch, in 6 to 8 weeks. Well, everything seemed to be goin’ great, and he did start to throw in the middle of Sept, and actually pitched a bit in the fall with what seemed to be pain free results.
Then they went into good ol’ mandatory winter conditioning. Finally, when ball started again in the spring, he was having some pain, but nothing he thought much about, but it eventually got worse and worse, and finally he just gave up the last month of the season because of the pain.
Then the doc asked what kind of conditioning he was doing, I told him the truth. The boy has always been small, and just like the 1st year of winter conditioning, he went a bit nuts with the lifting, trying to prove to the big guys he was just as strong as they were for body size. What he was doing was lifting extremely heavy weights, more than twice his weight, and was just about obsessed with bench presses.
The docs looked at each other, then back to me and just shook their heads. They said that as doctors they knew how to rehabilitate an injury like his, and they also knew how to properly condition a body for different physical challenges. Also, at the professional level or in a major collegiate program, there would be the kind of people on staff to properly help the athletes, but it was a problem at the smaller colleges and definitely in HSs, that the people charged with the health and safety of the athletes weren’t up to par.
Turns out that it wasn’t necessarily working with weights that was a problem, but definitely working with the heavy weights, and as much as he did, it was entirely possible that’s what was wrecking his arm.
Evidently, this is a major problem with pitchers all over the country. Some kind of macho testosterone BS gets to working, and a lot of damage gets done people aren’t even aware of. What it boils down to is, he could have worked out lifting 50#’s and doing 5 reps 10 times a day and probably not bothered anything. But lifting 240 #’s 5 reps 10 times a day was actually undoing what the operation did, and causing even more damage.
IOW, its just another case of improper training. Evidently one of the big problems across the country is HS P’s getting caught up in conditioning with FB players, and causing damage to arms and shoulders.
As it turned out, the 1st year it happened, he’d come off a summer of relatively little baseball activity, which I pretty much insisted on, and into the fall where he felt great and pitched great. Then they went to conditioning, and he had a problem. He’d never lifted weights much at all, and got carried away with the macho **** of a 6 pack and huge ABs.
Well, in the spring, it was a lot of throwing in the cold, plus weights were still mandatory. The two didn’t go together! Again, not the weights, but the amount of weight and kind of lifting is what likely caused the problem, and things went’ downhill from there.
Who’s fault is it? Of course I take the lion’s share of responsibility because I’m the dad. But he wasn’t living at home where I could monitor what was going on, and all I could really do was count on the staff at the school to be doing the right things. Definitely my bad! So, we’ll see what happens this time with him living at home where Dada gets to keep a beady eye on him!
At any rate, my primary concern is that he can quit taking drugs to get to sleep! The rest of it is catch as catch can, and maybe with some supervised work, I’ll get to see him do what he used to do so well.
