After I told him that the pain wasn’t going away and even affected my every-day activities, he decided to schedule me an appointment with an orthopedist at Tall Grass. I was nervous because I did not know the severity of my injury. As my appointment was nearing, I began to get more and more nervous about what the doctor would tell me. Would I need surgery? How long would it take to recover? These questions stayed floating in my mind until the day of my appointment.
At my appointment, I met with the orthopedist and started off by laying on a table. He did a lot of odd things with my arm and I could feel the throbbing pain when he would rotate it. He left for a little bit, then soon came back with his diagnosis. He diagnosed me with a severely strained rotator cuff, and recommended me to attend physical therapy for six to eight weeks. This was great news because I did not have to get surgery for the injury.
Even though it was good news, I did not know the challenge ahead of me on the road to recovery. I did physical therapy three times a week, for eight weeks. It took a lot hard work and dedication to strengthen my shoulder. I did many unique exercises to strengthen specific areas of the shoulder. Some of the exercises I did were: shoulder bike, clock band, medicine ball drills, ladder push ups. I think my favorite exercise was the shoulder bike because it was one of the hardest workouts and it was good for