Been off the forum most of the year, recovering from latest injury/repair, so this thread quite appropriate.
Pain? Been in it non-stop for a long time, just gotta live with it, not let it dictate.
My former orthopedic doc when I was still living bay area coastside, a 49er team surgeon, called it ‘sport caused traumatic arthritis exacerbated by injury’…fancy way of saying if you charged hard and took your shots, the bill will show up later in life.
The toll of 5 decades of surfing and 3 decades of snowboarding the steep and deep?
Two meniscus knee repairs, two non-repaired herniated discs now self fused, left pec ripped off and repaired, hip replacement, and the latest, a badly torn rotator cuff last Dec while surfing da kine, easily the worse injury of any of them. Repaired in Jan, put on a one year time out while working my way through what has been my toughest recovery. Continual PT 4x week, now swimming laps, shoulder still wakes me up at night.
So what to do? Accept the pain, stay lean, work out consistently, eat right, hydrate well, minimize the NSAD’s to bare minimum, and most importantly, get off your okole and just keep on doing!
Couldn’t surf, so once my shoulder was good enough, ramped up my fly fishing, put a lot of King Salmon in the boat, filled my neighbors freezers and my own with hatchery fish, let the beautiful natives continue upstream after an intense tussle, spent many days on the river, thankful to be there
Now have a new 9’6 lightweight epoxy ‘rehab’ cruiser sitting on the rack, plan to head down to SoCal in mid January for the first time in 40 years, find some mellow waves to get my sea legs under me again, visit some shops including the Bird Shed for the first time, maybe head north with a new ride or two.
Pain? Means we’re still breathing, and a good reason to go do something fun to take our mind off of it.
cheers