Shoulder Injury - Labrum Tear

I had never heard of a SLAP tear until I learned that I had one! Then of course I started hearing all kinds of stories about swimmers with SLAP tears. I'm 34 and have been swimming competitively most of my life and fortunately had never had any problems or injuries. In November of 2002 I began having pain in my left shoulder. I nursed it along for maybe 8 months (including both SC and LC Nats!) before doing anything about it. I changed my workouts to be 100% quality with no wasted yards because I felt like it was the repetitions that were killing me. Anyway, went through an MRI that revealed nothing, two different cortisone shots that did nothing and physical therapy for about 6 weeks that did nothing. Than I had a dye MRI done which revealed the tear. Had surgery on December 18th and am now in my sling for another couple weeks. Good points have been made above about the actual surgery (very little pain for the first day or two but then it can be rather painful). I had some sort of pain pump for 48 hours after surgery. Basically an IV drip that is spring loaded and automatically feeds you some liquid pain med directly into the shoulder. After 48 hours it runs dry and they take it out. It fits nicely inside your sling and I believe it helped quite a bit. I was off the pain meds after about 4-5 days. I was told 6 months to regain full strength with the possibility of being back in the water doing light swimming in 4 months. If you want to be aggressive you can do things sooner (Lenny K. won the 100m back at the US Open almost 6 months to the day after having surgery for a torn labrum). But he is a full time swimmer and my guess is he had full access to doctors and physical therapists to help him along. And my research also found a professional baseball player who had SLAP tear surgery and reinjured himself on the very first pitch after his doctors told him it was ok to try pitching again. So it is best to go slowly. Unless anybody has heard of a story where somebody went too slowly and never regained full range of motion? My doctor wants me to wear the sling for a total of 4 weeks and then start physical therapy about 2 weeks after that. In the meantime he has me doing exercises on my own each day at home - mostly just trying to slowly gain back some range of motion. If anybody wants to talk about PT during recovery for SLAP tear surgery please email me at jroddin@pvmasters.org Jeff Roddin

I had never heard of a SLAP tear until I learned that I had one! Then of course I started hearing all kinds of stories about swimmers with SLAP tears. I'm 34 and have been swimming competitively most of my life and fortunately had never had any problems or injuries. In November of 2002 I began having pain in my left shoulder. I nursed it along for maybe 8 months (including both SC and LC Nats!) before doing anything about it. I changed my workouts to be 100% quality with no wasted yards because I felt like it was the repetitions that were killing me. Anyway, went through an MRI that revealed nothing, two different cortisone shots that did nothing and physical therapy for about 6 weeks that did nothing. Than I had a dye MRI done which revealed the tear. Had surgery on December 18th and am now in my sling for another couple weeks. Good points have been made above about the actual surgery (very little pain for the first day or two but then it can be rather painful). I had some sort of pain pump for 48 hours after surgery. Basically an IV drip that is spring loaded and automatically feeds you some liquid pain med directly into the shoulder. After 48 hours it runs dry and they take it out. It fits nicely inside your sling and I believe it helped quite a bit. I was off the pain meds after about 4-5 days. I was told 6 months to regain full strength with the possibility of being back in the water doing light swimming in 4 months. If you want to be aggressive you can do things sooner (Lenny K. won the 100m back at the US Open almost 6 months to the day after having surgery for a torn labrum). But he is a full time swimmer and my guess is he had full access to doctors and physical therapists to help him along. And my research also found a professional baseball player who had SLAP tear surgery and reinjured himself on the very first pitch after his doctors told him it was ok to try pitching again. So it is best to go slowly. Unless anybody has heard of a story where somebody went too slowly and never regained full range of motion? My doctor wants me to wear the sling for a total of 4 weeks and then start physical therapy about 2 weeks after that. In the meantime he has me doing exercises on my own each day at home - mostly just trying to slowly gain back some range of motion. If anybody wants to talk about PT during recovery for SLAP tear surgery please email me at jroddin@pvmasters.org Jeff Roddin