As I have posted elsewhere on this blog, I was knocked off my bike on August 1st.<\/p>\n
Since then, I have gone through two surgeries to repair my collarbone.<\/p>\n
My recovery is progressing slowly, some days I think that I am not getting any better, other days I realise that it is less painful nowadays than it was, say, a month ago.<\/p>\n
Then I move awkwardly, my muscles spasm and I have pain tearing up my upper arm and my shoulder and tears in my eyes.<\/p>\n
The current status is that I have seriously restricted movement in my left shoulder.<\/p>\n
Standing straight up, I can raise my arm forwards to about 80*, I can get to about 60* sideways and maybe 10* backwards. When I reach those limits, I get significant muscle spasms in my upper arm and a \u00c2\u00a0sharp pain that stretches from my left ear to my elbow.<\/p>\n
Obviously I try not to move my arm too far.<\/p>\n
Since I last updated my blog, the physiotherapist referred me back to the surgeon as the pain was getting worse and the exercises did not seem to help.<\/p>\n
Following that visit I had an MRI scan. This shows that their is a significant inflammation in the muscle and nerve tunnel underneath my collarbone. This may be due to the original screws in the plate being a tad long, or it could simply be because of muscle tearing in the accident.<\/p>\n
The specialist injected ‘something to help’ into the cavity and it has helped, a little.<\/p>\n
Sadly this is not the magical cure though.<\/p>\n
At least not yet. The next step is to have more X-ray’s in March with a view to removing the plate as soon as is practical.<\/p>\n
with regards to the plate, I have come to really hate it, it bugs me, I find it irritating and I want to scratch the skin around it. Unfortunately much of the skin around it has little or no feeling. which makes it all a tad frustrating.<\/p>\n
I also went to see an insurance injuries assessor, he confirmed that my collarbone was broken and that I now have a 6″ scar that ‘is likely to be permanent’ and that I have much reduced range of movement.<\/p>\n
The driver that hit me is in court on Jan 29th, I am looking forwards to seeing the outcome of that too.<\/p>\n
I go back to physical therapy in February.<\/p>\n
In general things are not as bad as they were in December, I am in less day-to-day pain. But I keep finding that I have to compensate for my shoulder. Travelling on the tube with a bag is hell – I cannot put the bag on my left shoulder, so it has to stay on my right shoulder, I also need to use my right arm for bracing against the movement. It is not too bad on a quiet train, but on a busy one full of commuters it gets bad because I cannot cope with the jostling that I get.<\/p>\n
I also occasionally get stuck trying to get a jacket or coat on and off. This is the cause of much hilarity. I simply cannot move my shoulder enough to shrug it enough to help. I have a hell of a fun time with tee shirts, especially if I go to the gym etc.<\/p>\n
I am yet to ride my bike since the crash, I have sat on it a few times and practised putting my weigh on the bars, I have also been to spin class a couple of times and apart from suffering with some sections, I feel like I might just be able to ride assuming I make a few adjustments.<\/p>\n
All in all, I am frustrated that my progress is not faster, but at least it is in the right direction….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I have posted elsewhere on this blog, I was knocked off my bike on August 1st. Since then, I have gone through two surgeries to repair my collarbone. My recovery is progressing slowly, some days I think that I am not getting any better, other days I realise that it is less painful nowadays […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[62,30,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-344","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cycling","category-fitness","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nealon.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nealon.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nealon.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nealon.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nealon.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/nealon.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nealon.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nealon.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nealon.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}