Shoulder Surgery Recovery

lifter pro wrestler and chronic pain driver. Both for life is a podcast about living with the challenges of chronic pain. Our goal is to acknowledge, inspire, and relate

“to people living with chronic pain. I believe it is not only possible to survive, but to”

live a full life and thrive with chronic pain. No matter where you are in your journey, our mission is to give you the information and inspiration that will help you become Bolt for Life. Hi, everyone. This is Brian, the producer of the Bolt For Life podcast. I know you're not very familiar with hearing my voice, but we want to check in with Garrett who's back at the house recovering from a recent shoulder surgery. He shares with us some

really great information about the types of things that he's doing to make sure that that surgery is successful and that his recovery is as comfortable and as quick as possible. To any one that might be recovering from a surgery, planning a surgery, or even people with chronic conditions in general, we hope you gain a lot from this episode. You'll be hearing from Garrett

“who is back at the house and we recorded this remotely. Thanks so much for listening.”

Hey guys, just want to check in. I'm back at my home recovering from the shoulder surgery. So, Dr. said it looked worse than he thought it was from the images. He was able to fix it, but it meant reattaching two of the muscles of the rotator cuff back to the bone with a screw and a graft and then the other two muscles he repaired as far as the rotator cuff goes. And then he reattached part of the bicep tendon, which was also torn. So we did a bunch of work in there

and in my surgeons' words he said I have a lot of healing to do. So working on that.

First week, pretty intense. The first week they had me hooked up to a cooling machine. So

it's a device that you get right from the surgery and you fill it with ice and it has some hoses on it and then you wear this pad that connects to the hoses and it circulates the cold water

“around the area where you had surgery and honestly it helps a lot. It's supposed to help reduce”

the swelling, it's supposed to help with the pain and I have to say I would agree on both the counts. It's definitely helped. So I'm still using that. This is a week and two days after the surgery had my one week follow up with my surgeon's position assistant. Everything looks so great. It looks so well that she took the stitches out and put some series strips on here. So that's all good and well. I go back in four to five weeks. Two days before this visit,

I went to physical therapy which was great. Sarah friend Dr. Kristina Pate. She got me started

with some exercises to do at home. She gave me a whole program to work basically just kind of an

idea of what the whole recovery plan generally looks like, what to expect, what not to expect. And I love that about her. She's really thorough and we've got a great game plan in place. She's awesome to work with. She really takes her time and she spent almost an hour with me. And I go back tomorrow from more physical therapy and we'll continue from there. I'm going to be going twice a week for probably the first couple months, twice a week and then we'll go to once a week.

But I'll still continue the exercises at home, continuing the rehab. Follow up with the surgeon in four to five weeks. They want me to stay in the sling and the brace for probably up until that visits. So that'll be at about the five to six week mark. So not thrilled about that, but I do get to get out of it four or five times a day to do exercises. I can shower now, which is a big, a big relief for everybody to be able to do that.

And I was slowly, but surely, I'm able to do a little bit more around the house.

You know, I was able to make some eggs this morning night. The first three days they do a nerve

block on the arm when they do the surgery. So the arm is completely numb and dead for three days. So that's really, really challenging. And my heart really goes out to people that have paralysis in limbs or people that lose limbs and just to be without my hand and my arm for just three days was a big wake-up call. So really, blessed to have have all four limbs and have them mostly functioning. But, slowly, but surely, able to do a little bit more. I was able to

make breakfast today, you know, unload, load the dishwasher. It's just everything in a new pace and a new speed working on organizing my day so that I'm resting enough. I'm getting on the ice

And yeah, just one day at a time now, I made it back into the gym. The gyms are open here in

North Carolina now, which is great under limited circumstances, but so it was great to get back into the gym. Just went in and did my therapy exercises, was able to do just a little bit with my legs and roll on the lacrosse ball a little bit for my nerve damage and my legs and my hips and great just to see everybody and be back in that great supportive environment. Nice, I was actually able to take, go with my son and my wife last night to the martial arts lesson, which was great. It was nice to

be able to be an inactive observer there, observer there. That was a good thing. Getting out a little more, more, able to do a little bit of limited driving now that I have the function back in the arm

“in the hand. So slowly but surely we're making our way through. I think we have a wedding to go to”

next weekend in South Carolina. That's going to be a trip. We're going to all weekend. That'll be a challenge, but I'm going to prepare as well as I can. Everyone's aware of my situation, so I think expectations have been lowered from a little bit as far as how much I'll be around, how much I'll be able to participate in different things. If I need to go back to the hotel early, that's all fine. But I'm fortunate that I should still be able to make it. I should still be able to participate

and keep on keeping on. It is the right shoulder, correct? Yeah, yeah. It's actually done Arthur scoffically. Yeah, there's not much of an incision. Right, there's just a bunch of them kind of looks like a dog bite. But it's just different incisions in different places where they can get in there and get that Arthur scoffic tube in there to be able to do the work. And yeah, that was

“really pleased that they were able to remove the stitches just after seven days. And everything”

looks like it's healing really, really well. So Beth is keeping me on a really great nutritional program. They can sure that I'm getting plenty of protein. They can sure that I'm getting plenty of veggies. Plenty of other supplements, vitamin C, zinc things that help the immune system, help healing, doing some NAC. Also doing some glutathione. These are all just different things that really help the body in processing the injury then and it should really help with the healing.

Can you describe what NAC is? It's a precursor to glutathione. So basically, it helps your body

take the vitamin C in and convert it to glutathione, which of course the more that the body produces the glutathione all the better, which helps mitochondria function, helps in just the whole healing process, the energy in the cells. So the more the body can produce that naturally, the better, and the NAC helps with that. The vitamin C then also helps the NAC. And then on top of it, if I need to, I can also take some glutathione. But glutathione is a tricky thing to get in a supplement.

“It's very expensive. You have to keep it cold. There's a couple of different types.”

So it's something that you use kind of limit. It's something maybe you'd use once a week. Whereas the NAC you can use at the other day or every day, so to keep those good at dial levels high. So that's helping with the healing process. We're also doing some work with peptides. And the peptide that I'm using is BPC 157 with body protecting compound 157. And that really aids super aids in the healing. Any trauma to the body. It helps the uptake of

branch chain amino acids, the four central amino acids that you bought. It has to have in order to

repair and create new tissue. It is really great with and basically peptides are just combinations

of amino acids. And then when they're used in the body, the combination of amino acids causes a sequence of other events. So it's kind of a newer science. They've been around a while, but they're becoming more and more mainstream. These were prescription peptides that were prescribed to me. And it's really, really, really supposed to do a really great job in aiding in the healing. So we're excited about that. So I will do that for two months, it's twice a day, for two months.

And we'll see how that helps with the healing and in what that's able to do. On top of that, you know, keeping the protein high. And overall, generally eating enough that my body is able to heal, but not just laying around and taking in tons of calories that my body doesn't need. So still within reason, starting with household chores, taking care of that stuff. Took a short walk with Jake the other day. Christina, the physical therapist, suggested not using

the treadmill or elliptical or anything like that because we don't want that artificial kind of movement where you're jumping and jarring. That's not good for the joint rate now. So just a basic walk familiar, familiar ground, a little bit of work with the legs at the gym, a little bit of work

keeping that momentum moving forward. For somebody that doesn't have a bath at the house,

“I don't think you're surgeon or anybody in that office, probably recommended any of that stuff.”

Do you did they actually recommend that? No, so for someone that isn't lucky enough to have bath around, who's a licensed nurse practitioner, who's helping with all these nutritional and supplemental things to help improve my recovery, I would suggest going to see a functional medicine doctor. And a good functional medical doctor will do some blood work beforehand, which I just had mind done about three months ago before the surgery. So you want to make sure you get your vitamin levels,

your mineral levels, your hormone levels. All of those things had an optimal function before you have the surgery. And you're going into the surgery, of course you want to maintain that. And then you want to help supplement all of the nutrition and the things that the body is going to be used and up to repair now, not only these small little incisions, but that connective tissue that's in there, that graph that's in there, all of that, the connective tissue into the screws that are into the

bones of all of that has to heal. And that's tissue that I'm going to be using for the rest of my life. So we really wanted to heal well and heal strong. So I would totally recommend even before you go to have the surgery, well in advance, getting some blood work done from the functional medicine doctor or like Dr. Gabe Plank that we had on the podcast, he does a lot of that stuff. Even if you go to a practice, generally speaking, a practice that does bio-identical hormone replacement

should be familiar with peptides and what they can do. And that's a really great route to go. Now there's other peptides that people use for other things. There's peptides that help but sleep. There's peptides that some people actually take the BPC 157 just to help in the recovery from their workouts if they're a hyperfome athlete or they want to get them really great shape. It does aid in that as well. You know, help with the metabolism or help with the recovery from the

workout. So that's a great thing to do. I would say do some research beforehand. You know, look up the peptides, look up nutrition to help in aid and healing after surgery. Look up a good functional medicine doctor. I know Dr. Frank would use on the podcast, but his number out there was happy to help people find a practice that could meet some of those

“requirements. And I think the next phase of my recovery plan and next couple of weeks I'll look to”

do intravenous vitamins. So basically just an IV therapy that's going to give my body extra boost

of all those vitamins and minerals that are going to help in the aid healing of the shoulder. Are some of those precautions that you're taking specifically related to COVID or are those you know, things that you just would do any way to keep yourself healthy and keep everything moving in the right direction. A lot of the things that we're using as far as recovery, I would probably do whether we were in the COVID-19 situation or not, but as a plus,

it definitely a lot of the supplements that I'm in taking do help to boost the immune system. And just like with any any time you text the body, it wears on the immune system. You know, here I had a four hour surgery, a medications, just the exposure to germs, the incisions, the graft actually that was put in was cadaver. It was donated, which I sincerely appreciate. You know, all of those things my body has to now take that on and heal around that and heal

with that. So it is something I would do, whether we were in the COVID-19 situation or not, but I feel a lot better having that in place, especially during these times, for the pandemic. Did you get any information about the cadaver? Can you choose like a boxer or like a like a deep-sea fisherman or some of this, you know, God, like, no, but what I've already called this my go-shoulder. So, you know, I'm basically not responsible for anything this arm does.

I'm just kidding. It's my now. I own it. It's high on it. So, I do truly appreciate it. I may still refer to it as my go-shoulder, but I own whatever it may do in the future. Having gone through other surgeries and having not having the best results every time you've gone through something, you know, each time do you think that's more of the reasons why you're a little bit more aggressive with how you're trying to recover? Yeah, for sure, with all the other

surgeries that have been through, definitely we've learned a lot of lessons and I've had some horrible surgeries with horrible complications and whether they were something that could have

been avoided or not, it's not always clear, but I'd have learned certainly something to do

“and some things not to do. And one of the most important things for me not to do is to overdo it,”

you know, that I have to really be careful about that. Surgery that I had on my ankle,

personal trainer. I was holding the pads for client and I rolled my ankle one day and it was a

dip out of me a little bit and I don't have a lot of feeling in that leg that's swelled up a little but didn't bother me much. So it went back to work and about six weeks later, my ankle would really, it was really swollen up, it was really in bad shape, went to the emergency room and they said, oh, your foot's broken and it looks like it's been broke for quite a while and it's been breaking and re-growing and breaking and re-growing to the point that it tore the tendon that

holds my arch up. So I had to have a surgery to repair that tendon and shave that bone down, which is it's pretty common type procedure, it's just a little outpatient procedure. As a result of that, I developed the RSD and that foot, now whether that could have been avoided or not, we don't know, I developed probably two months after the surgery, I developed a staff infection in that

“foot and almost lost the foot. I saw my pain management doctor and he said, you need to get to the”

emergency right now, are you going to lose that foot and that was definitely the case. I refused to have the surgeon operate on it. That did the original surgery, fortunately found somebody else to do it, and that, today, has been the most painful experience in my life. So I already had the RSD, I had already had the surgery, I had the staff infection, the staff infection had to be cut out, the whole area had to be cleaned out and it would literally come out of recovery. I would wake up

screaming, they would hit me with the medication, I'd pass out, I'd come to a little while later, wake up screaming, they'd hit me with the medication, I'd pass out and went on like that for a while, and the days and the weeks following that were by far, some of the most painful of my life. And on top of that, because the RSD affects the nerves, it affects the blood vessels, it wouldn't heal. So that whole area was open for months and months on end. I would have to go every

week and have to the wound center and they would have to care for it, cut away dead tissue. I was on intravenous, I had an IV pick line and I had to give myself intravenous antibiotics for

six weeks at home. So it was just an absolute nightmare. So one of the first things that I took away

from that surgery was to be prepared. That was just a little surgery, we didn't think anything of it, it shouldn't be that big a deal and it turned out to be a big deal. So I treat every surgery as if it's a big deal and I prepare and put things in place. And you know, that surgery was it's one of the smallest surgeries I've had and it turned out to be life threatening almost lost my foot, horrible pain,

“and arts, the everything else. So I think the things the lesson we learned was to really prepare”

ahead of time. In this case, I had three months to prepare for this surgery because we're during the time of the pandemic and non-emergency surgeries were halted. This was considered non-emergency, so I had to wait three weeks to get it done. So that gave me plenty of time to prep, make sure that, you know, I'm as healthy as I can possibly. It gave me time to practice with my left hand using a knife and fork, which has come in handy. Can you do chopsticks though? Can you do chopsticks with the

left hand? I have not done chopsticks yet, but I will work on that. I will work on the chopsticks. That's a good challenge. If you have that immune system as strong as possible, going to any surgery, even if it's just having a root canal, you know, if you have the ability to strengthen the immune system, just even one of the big mistakes I know I've made before most of my surgeries up until recently is I would run myself ragged because I'd want to get things ready. I know that

I'm going to be laid up for so many days or so many weeks, so I try to get this done. I try to get that done. Make sure this is done. So Beth doesn't have to do it. This is in place for Jake and and that's great if I can do it ahead of time, but I realize those days going into, I need to be

“rested. I need to be well. I need to really take care of myself. But I think that's the big part”

about it is now since having the chronic conditions and the chronic pain, it's all the more important to boost that immune system before and after the surgery because my system is already stressed. Anybody with chronic pain or a chronic condition, their immune system is already stressed from that chronic condition. The cortisol levels are all over the place that we talked about before. So the more I've learned to balance those things, be as healthy as possible, be rested up,

get enough sleep, just be as well as possible. From the mental side of things, you just mentioned the situation with your foot surgery and all that stuff, having gone through that excruciating scenario and that much pain, is that helping you in your perspective on

this go around? Yeah, I think that's always since that time has been the measuring point,

the bar, and it's not one that I want to cross, and that's definitely a motivating factor to stay well, and do the things that suggest that I do, like use the ice machine, follow up, put physical therapies, so don't get a frozen shoulder. Do the exercises that Chris need to prescribe for me to help keep things moving and keep things as healthy and well as possible.

figure out who you need to put into place as far as having a good physical therapist? Is this

“something that they would be telling you? These things to do? Yeah, and I think the way I've seen”

things evolve over the past 10 to 15 years is that there's a lot, for example, I had this surgery,

normally I go up to Duke, and they're incredible up there. This surgery I had here in Wilmington,

at a merge ortho, but a lot of those areas, those groups like that, they bought up a lot of smaller practices and now they have everything under one roof. So the plus side is that they make it very easy for you to come to your doctor, go to physical therapy, it's all in the same, all in the same place. A lot of other places have included labs on site, different things like that where they've kind of taken it and they put everything in one place to make it easier for people to find. The thing I

don't like about that is me personally is, well I don't want to work with their physical therapist, I have a physical therapist that I really like and she's awesome. So and of course, fortunately they're willing to let me work and do that type of thing. I love my doctors, I do, I talk to them a lot this whole situation, and I would love to have had the shoulder done at Duke, but when we really looked at everything, it made a lot of sense. I have a good capable people

here in Wilmington, so why not do it here? If that's a good option. It's a good option. To me, I used to just be one of those people that whatever my doctor said, I just trusted that that was it,

“and that should be the best thing. I didn't question a lot of it until I started having complications,”

and still I started having chronic conditions, and and I had things go wrong, and that's caused me to be a much better advocate for myself, and I think that's really important for people to do, as much as possible. I mean, we live in the information age. You can do as much research as you want, but I think to educate yourself on what's going on, you know, it doesn't hurt to get a couple different opinions. In my case, I've been able to talk to several different doctors that know my case,

and we're all pretty much in agreement and what we should do, and they put in the effort to it, you know, and it's hard, and it's so difficult because you're already in pain. Your life's already been impacted by this injury, but whatever it is, you have going on, and it really sucks. But I will say, it's worth the time and the effort to put in, do some research, talk to as many people as you can, get as many opinions as you can. Sometimes, cost is a big, you know, a big,

you know, roadblock for people, you know, you don't want to pay, even if you have a co-payment, that could be expensive, or if you don't have insurance on your pain out of pocket, it's more expensive

“than something to go here and there. But I think it was something that's been a great resource for me,”

especially with orthopedic stuff, is the gym has been always been a good resource for me.

Wherever I've lived, I've had friends that I've had similar, like-minded, have been athletes, or trained at a pretty high level in some form of resistance training. So it's not uncommon for us to have orthopedic problems. So I found people that I trust at the gym, the professionals, the owners, the personal trainers, friends that I know that are well-accomplished, can a lot of times be a really great resource for finding medical people that understand where you're

coming from. And look, you know, and then, of course, you have that confidence of the referral. Obviously, if I saw somebody, and actually, I had some of my friends from the gym that had shoulder surgery from the same doctor, and they were very happy without wind, that's a good sign for me, you know, with everything else in place. So yeah, I think, you know, doing your research,

and using whatever resources you have at your disposal, like I said, the gym has always been a

good one for me, and then see what your options are, you know? And it's tough, and sometimes it's some really tough choices to make. I had to decide whether I wanted to do the nerve block with the shoulder. Now, my doctor, I do suggest that I do a nerve block, and that decreases the chance of the RSD spreading. The RSD usually happens in a limb and happens from a trauma like a surgery. But when I had originally got the RSD, they did a nerve block on my leg, that I got the RSD in,

and nobody can say for sure whether the nerve block contributed to me getting the RSD or not. Because what happens is that it blocks the pain for so many days, but when it wears off, you get this huge rush of pain, and the concern is that sometimes that contributed to the RSD to spread the different areas. So yeah, that wasn't an easy decision to make. I ultimately decided to go with the nerve block, the one for dealing with the pain after the surgery. Two, the biggest

one is probably that my doctor had suggested it, even knowing my history with the nerve block and the leg. So I felt like that was enough. But that was a tough decision, right up until the last,

if I was going to do it or not, the night before I really had given some thought. I weighed everything, I wrote it out, and it just made the most sense. And so far so good. You mentioned a couple of times going to the gym to do your rehab exercises, and you mentioned to me personally the other day how

“it's just good to be around people and friends from the gym. What kind of conversations do you have?”

Like why do you think that is so valuable to be able to go hang out there and talk with those people?

Well, you know, I think first and foremost is our friends are there. We have a lot of friends at the gym.

So I see them, and some of them are really good friends that we do things without sight of the gym, and some of them are mostly kind of acquaintances that we're friendly with at the gym, some of them I haven't seen in months because the gym was our main source of interaction. And it's good just to get there and see those smiling faces, and you know, they walked in with the sling out and I got thumbs up, I got glad to see you here,

glad you're working, glad you're doing something, glad the surgery weren't well, how did the surgery go, all that stuff? You know, so that to me is really it's really a big mental boost for me, just to have that support and encouragement. And of course still, you know, Miss Holly was there remind me not to overdo it. So I need that too, I mean, if there were ever time to consider getting a membership, should they consider doing that after

a surgery like that? I totally would, and I think one of the best things to do is talk to your physical therapist, and if there are good physical therapists, they should be able to direct you

“to a decent gym that you should feel comfortable doing what you do. At Christina's physical therapy”

clinic, they have a certain amount of days and certain amount of hours per week that anybody that's being treated there can come in and use their equipment. You know, so now the people already know you, they're a little bit more comfortable. That's another good option. But yeah, to get into a local gym and I guarantee if you talk to the gym owners, you talk to the people working there, you explain to them what's going on. I'm sure they're going to welcome you with open arms,

they're going to lead you to different pieces of equipment that you may or may not be able to use. You want to double check, you know, but they might be able to give you some guidance as to what you can do there. And honestly, I mean, I think it's a great way, it's kind of a great conversation starter with people that have been through it. And I guarantee if you go to a decent-sized gym, you're going to run into some people that have had common injuries or even if there wasn't

a shoulder or maybe it was a torn pectoral muscle or maybe, you know, they explain their ankle

and they couldn't train for a while. So you find people that can relate and it's always a bit of

“an art I think to socializing at the gym because, you know, you don't want to interrupt somebody's”

workout, you don't want to take away from their workout, you don't want to hold a equipment. So, you know, do it in the right places, do it at this movie bar, do it in the locker room, if you're off to the side or at the end of an exercise class. You know, that's a great place to kind of congregate a little bit and share. And those are really great ways to make, you know, lasting friendships are really fine, good support. They can help you get through the injury,

but just be tactful. You know, and be respectful of other people's workouts and, you know, nowadays, everybody has the ear buds in, that's a big red flag. Don't talk to me, you know, but if somebody comes over and they take your ear buds out and then they want to talk to you, that could be a great thing. And I guess if they don't have that outlet, yeah, you can reach out to us at Facebook or Instagram, you can find us at bothfalife.com. Just reach out. Yeah, we love to hear it from you

and hear what's going on with your recovery journey. And I'd love to share with you some of my experiences. Unfortunately, I have many, but it's, it's put me in a position where I've been able to help a lot of people through my experience. But it's really been great checking back in with you guys and keeping up to speed is where my recovery journey is recovering from the rotator cuff surgery. So far so good. It's great to get in and see Dr. Christina Pate, great to get back to my surgeon,

have the stitches out and start moving forward. Going forward, we have an episode with Dr. Christina Pate that we recorded before I had this rotator cuff incident. She actually helped me with my other shoulder, which I have had a tearing for years. And she was able to do some different techniques and things with me to help improve that shoulder. So that's going to be coming up. She's really awesome. She's a doctor of physical therapies. She's really passionate about what she does. And she sure

is helping me a ton. Thank you. My wife Beth and my son Jake really helped me out that first week.

My arm wasn't working very well and they did so much for me. They helped me with meals. They even had to help me get dressed. They still need help tying my shoes occasionally. So Beth and Jake, thank you for all your love and support and help. It's making it so much, so much easier. Thank you so much for listening again. This is Brian the producer of the Bolt for Life podcast. Join us on the next episode with Dr. Christina Pate, the physical therapist. You can see a video

of Garrett's visit with Dr. Christina on the YouTube channel for Bolt for Life as well as a video

brace works as well as a surprise guest visit from Hamlet the Wonder Pig back at the Bolt household. Thank you so much for listening to the Bolt for Life podcast and we'll see you next time. you