I recently underwent shoulder surgery on my left shoulder while being a right hand thrower. I mostly play 1A and both hands and shoulders are pretty dang important to my style.
I figured someone else may have shoulder pain or surgery at some point in time. I’m going to do my best to document my surgical recovery until I get back to throwing normally again. I hope anyone searching for this topic finds peace in reading my journey. I am not a writer or story teller, but I’ll give it a shot.
In the fall of 2022 I was injured at work and tore my left shoulder up. I had several labrum tears, shoulder instability, and a separation. I proceeded to spend all of 2023 rehabbing the shoulder to the point where my pain was nearly nonexistent with continuous daily rehab. I still had a lot of instability in the shoulder. I would get popping and cracking sounds with movement. I would also wake up with burning pain in the night if I was sleeping on it.
At the end of November 2023 I underwent surgery where the joint was cleaned up and tightened. I had several implants inserted to hold my labrum in place.
I have lots of surgical pictures but I’m not sure this forum is the place to post pictures that can be gory in nature.
I am now about two weeks post op in a sling with very little mobility in the repaired shoulder. I have severe pain in the shoulder whenever it is moved in any direction. I will be stating physical therapy in the next week.
I hope by documenting this I can help show the process of returning to throwing after an injury. Right now I am really struggling with losing such a big piece of my life and my main coping mechanism.
Wish you the best! I dislocated my shoulder baaad skateboarding this summer. Luckily i was only out of throwing a few weeks. No surgery of course but man that sucked. Here’s to a speedy recovery! Oh and DO NOT slack on the physical therapy.
I tore my biceps off and after reattaching i have a lot of pain trying to throw. I picked up slinging begleri and have been learning slowly. Its super fun i recommend giving it a try. You move your arm around alot less and it mostly works your forearm and hand muscles
I did the same to my throwing bicep. I had a nice Popeye muscle for some time. I got the reattachment and a bunch of tendon steroid shots for the bicep tendon. I still get quite a bit of irritation on that side, but with ice and at home stretching I can tolerate it. I did a lot of grip strengthening during rehab and it really helped.
This can NOT be overstated. The more you put into your therapy the better off you will be. It may be painful in the moment but the alternative is having that pain set in for the long haul and plague you the rest of your life.
I needed to hear this. I have been doing that at home therapy and just moving my wrist at this point is worse than any bone break I have ever had. I’m going to need a rag to bite on and a flask of whiskey to push through the PT.
Hey silver lining, maybe learn some looping with your off hand while you’re out of commission. Might be enough to scratch that throwing itch when it inevitably pops up
I had a great therapy appointment today. I am currently one month out of surgery and was given the green light to start moving my shoulder around with active assistance.
I can pick my arm up with my good arm and shift it around to start working on mobility. It’s extremely painful and is locked up with my elbow pinned to my side and my arm straight out. The muscles are extremely tight and it’s going to take a long while to get any sort of range back.
I am looking at six weeks of daily therapy until I can start working on the strength to lift my arm over anything shoulder height.
I’m looking forward to pushing through this and getting rid of the terrible burning feeling I get whenever I try to move the shoulder.
