Well, I got the good news/bad news on my shoulder injury today. The good news is that it isn't a rotator cuff tear and when healed, I should have close to 100% of my shoulder movement back. The bad news is that I have a
frozen shoulder, most likely as the result of an ultimate frisbee injury in the summer that I decided to play through. The weird thing is the cause of a "frozen" shoulder is unknown, but the ultra-sucky part is the recovery time--anywhere between 5 month and 26 months! My doctor is optimistic though, I'll be closer to the 5 month period. Until then, no mtn biking (ugggghhh nooooo), volleyball, racquetball, bowling, etc. On the plus side, I can still hike (no climbing though) and probably still snowboard, though I'm taking my chances to some degree. In the years I've been riding, I've never taken a hard fall on the shoulder so I'll just have to be a bit more conservative.
The other big suck factor is that this could have been prevented--I went to a different Dr. in the spring who misdiagnosed it. At that stage, simple rest would have been the cure. Oh well. So the course of action now is to get a guided injection of cortisone (done under an X-ray machine, cool) and then lots of rest for the arm. I can still run and *probably* road bike a little but ping-pong is right out of the question.
