Posted on Thursday, 16th April 2009 by Patrick Dorwin
Those of you that have been following the incredibly boring saga of my broken arm will be glad to learn that this should be the last update. I got the word from the doc that it’s about as good as it will get. It is “functional” and will continue to get stronger now that all of the weight limitations have been removed. So after 15 weeks of light duty, I can get back to my normal work load and schedule. My dispatcher promises to bust my @ss with every heavy load we have tomorrow, thanks Jeff! Hopefully he was halfway joking, but…
I finally got a picture of my x-ray, so you can see the hardware I am lugging around.
My arm will never be what it was, I have lost some flexibility, and you don’t realize how important that is until you lose it, but I should be able to eventually compensate by adding strength. One of the things that has really been a problem for me is my grip strength, a month after the surgery, I had about 15% of what my dominant hand had, three months after surgery, I was still hard pressed to bring it up to about 55%. Last night, when I did my last therapy session, I told my therapist that I was going to do 75 or die trying, I averaged 80% over three try’s, with my peak at 85, that is within range of a normal non-dominant hand! The doc is really pleased with the flexibility that I did get back, that I owe to my physical therapist, Jen, who is just a ‘lil bitty thing, but she could cause me pain like you wouldn’t believe! The day she dropped a little pink 1lb. weight into my hand, I thought it would rip my hand off (just ask ChrisFromRacine, she heard me whine about it often enough LOL), but she made me stick with it, and while it my not be 100%, it’s good enough!
This will probably be pretty sore as I start getting use to using it normally again, and I’m pretty much guaranteed to have arthritis in a few years, but it’s going to feel good to get back to as normal as I can get 
Posted in Home | Comments (5) |
5 Responses to “Good enough”
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April 16th, 2009 at 7:07 pm
Dude, you’ve got metal thingies in your arm.
Cool.
(chin up!)
April 16th, 2009 at 7:20 pm
Glad you’re “functional”. Wish it could be better, but I’m glad that you’re done with all the crap. And NOW, you get to have fun going through metal detectors!!
Seriously, I’m glad everything is as okay as it can get!
April 16th, 2009 at 7:22 pm
HEY!!! What happened to the “from Racine”??? I’ve lost my identity!
April 16th, 2009 at 8:18 pm
Incredible Bionic Blogger.
April 19th, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Patrick, whatever doesn’t kill you, only makes you stronger.