Here's my little electromagnetic cocoon. I had to divest myself of almost all things metal, though my MRI tech, Mike, allowed me to keep my belt on. He said it might twist a little while I was in the machine. I had notions of hanging from the ceiling by my belt buckle, but no belt-tightening actually commenced.
This is from the control room through the magnet-safe mesh embedded in the window. I had to fill out a form attesting that I had no pacemakers, defibrillators, bionic parts or shrapnel inside my body, and I dutifully answered no to all 60 items.Mike then clamped some headphones to my ears and cranked up some sweet tunes (Opera arias, actually--really). I took a 25 minute snooze which was a little other-worldly: while a soprano belted out Puccini, the machine alternately hummed, vibrated, rattled, and shook, sort of like a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Here are some screen shots from my MRI. First one to correctly guess my pathology based solely on these images gets a prize AND my undying admiration. Radiologists and Orthopedists must identify themselves as such.I think this one is an axial cut.
This one might be a coronal cut. Or a sagittal one.
That leaves these two to be sagittal cuts (probably). Or maybe they're coronal. I really can't remember. I specialize in the head and neck, not the shoulder, as my teammates well know.
All 4 cuts were selected semi-randomly from my study, although I tried to get a shot in each plane where the humeral head had its greatest dimention.
Our extremity MRI specialist will read the films in the morning, and then I'll see my orthopedist in the afternoon (while both of us are between surgical cases, of course).
I'm hoping to get on the O.R. table in the next week or so, to get this thing fixed and get on with what is shaping up to be a busy late winter. Based on some AAOS reading, I'll be in a sling for 3-4 weeks, and hopefully back into hard training in 6 weeks, so I don't think my road racing season is completely scrubbed; in fact, I may peak during crit season (which I seem to be better at) rather than during the early RR season (which seems to be shaping up to be a climbfest).
With my new bionic shoulder, I should be able to shove my way into the front of all those crit sprints. How rude of me!
4 comments:
sweet post. I hope you get some answers. The rehab is tedious but if you are compliant it will work.
( I tore my non dominant GH labrum falling off the bike as well, but have no biceps involvement so no surgery...yet)good luck!
I think most of us ride and accept the risk without a lot of worry but when injury happens it does cause me to pause and wonder if I should change the way I approach my riding.
Nah.
Best wishes for a speedy and successful recovery.
Take care Doc. You'll be pleased to know that I'm accompanying Mrs to My Fair Lady.
To quote from the movie "Sabrina" with Harrison Ford and Julia Ormond, when Ford tells his sec'y to get the best Broadway tickets available, she says: "you realize this is a musical, where the actors periodically break out in singing and dancing?"
My fav number from MFL is "Why Can't a Woman Be More Like A Man?"
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