Score One For Medical Science

Well, it's been a little over a week since the surgery to correct my frozen shoulder and I couldn't be happier about the whole thing. I went into the hospital last Friday, came home with three holes in my shoulder and considerably less damaged tissue on Saturday and was playing the fiddle relatively pain free by Tuesday. Since then, I've been keeping up with an amazingly (for me anyway) disciplined regimen of seven times daily exercises to keep the joint loose and to increase the range of motion even further and three-a-week visits to a physical therapy clinic to get even more stretching and strengthening under a watchful eye and a strong pair of hands.

Friday evening I spent a couple of hours at The Folk School pot luck and jam. Took my fiddle along and played tunes with folks for a couple of hours. By the end of it, I was feeling better about my bowing, after nearly a year away from it. Still needs work, but by the end of Friday's session I felt a lot more in control, more relaxed, and I was able to get some rhythm into my bowing, too. So, all in all, not a bad start.

Now, I just need to spend the next couple of weeks making sure that I keep to the program and I should be good as new!

How's the shoulder?

I've been dealing with a shoulder injury for almost a year now. It's kept me from playing the fiddle for the better part of six months or so, and friends are rightly concerned, I guess.


So, for all who care, it's getting better. Each week I improve some, but it is happening more slowly than I'd like. I've been picking up the fiddle and playing a little bit the past month or so and can now play comfortably on three of the four strings. Just a little more gain in the rotation of the shoulder joint and I'll be able to get that low string. I'm hoping to be back playing fiddle full time with the Hot Baloney Boys pretty soon.




In the meantime, I'm happy playing the banjo uke, lap dulcimer, and mandolin.

Of course, the upside to this whole thing is that not playing the fiddle for so long has allowed my mandolin playing to get a lot better than it was a year ago. So, there's always a silver lining!

Where I've Been & An Arm/Shoulder Update

Okay. Right off the bat, I'll say I pretty well stink at keeping current on this blog thing. No question. I get busy with other stuff and I forget to write anything here for weeks on end. That's life. Hopefully when I do post something, it's at least mildly interesting reading.

Since the last time I wrote here, I took a weekend trip up to Chicago with Amy, our daughter China, and her boyfriend/partner/whatever-the-heck-you-call-a-guy-you've-been-living-with-for-something-like-five-years, Tom. We had a great time. Saw the sights, took in a show at Second City, ate great food, and generally enjoyed ourselves a whole bunch. I'll post belated pictures here soon.

Last week, Amy and I took off for Memphis and further south for a few days. Again, a great time. We stayed downtown in Memphis about two blocks from Beale Street. Spent a day at the Memphis Zoo, which isn't as good as St. Louis' zoo, but is darned nice. They have some outstanding displays. They also have a pair of giant pandas that we stared at for a long time. You always hear how cute these creatures are, and the pictures seem to confirm it. But there's just nothing like standing a few feet away from a panda and watching it play. No wonder people are working so hard to save them from extinction.

We also toured Graceland. If you're in Memphis, you have to do it. And let me tell you: it's everything you would imagine it to be. I walked through the mansion and grounds with a constant mix of feelings of awe, irony, sorrow, and thinking "this guy was just nuts". The jungle room alone is worth the trip.

Had barbecue at the Rendevous. I don't know if it's the best slab of ribs I've ever eaten, but it was as close as counts.

We also drove down to Clarksdale, MS and visited the Delta Blues Museum. Pretty cool stuff. I spent a lot of time drooling over the guitars in the display cases. Amy liiked all of the flashy suits and dresses they had from blues notables. Then we drove around the delta for a couple of hours. It's beautiful country. And seeing a lot of the old farm houses, falling-down barns and shacks against the trees and green fields was like stepping into a time machine. Of course, there's some crushing poverty, too in that part of the rural south, and we saw that, too.

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Wow. This is getting longer than I'd expected. So, wrapping up....

I haven't been playing the fiddle much lately. I wrote in an earlier post that I have a messed up left shoulder. Well, it's gotten worse in the last couple of weeks. I don't know if I was being too aggressive with the exercises from my physical therapist, or if it's just a continuum that the injury has to go through on it's way to recovery. But it's quite a bit worse. Fortunately, playing the mandolin and uke are still doable for short periods of time. So, I'm not losing my mind completely.

I'll be seeing a new orthopedic surgeon next week to talk about new treatment strategies and will let you all know what happens with that. I'm hoping that he'll recommend a cortizone shot or two and I'll be well on my way. We'll see. I'm also thinking about acupuncture as a possibility. But, I'm keeping as positive an attitude as possible and am sure this is going to be fine soon.