Quite a Serious Injury

I went to my GP last night. Told him what I was doing, why I was doing it, and how at some point during doing it, I hurt my arm.

He prodded and twirled and in once instance I’m sure he thumped my left shoulder before telling me to put my shirt back on and take a seat. He then did that sucking air through the teeth thing. Not quite the “That’ll cost you” sort that you get from workmen just after you ask them to quote you. More a short “How do I tell you that you are a very silly boy” sort of air suck.

He then proceeded to tell me about the shoulder joint and how complex and clever it is. He wasn’t really telling me anything I didn’t know about the shoulder joint, I read human biology at Uni, don’t you know. And what I didn’t learn there, I discovered over the last few days while researching my malady on wikipedia. He then also went on to tell me about how the body grows and changes with trauma. Muscles need to tear before they repair bigger and stronger, and bones when subjected to injury can swell and deform.

After the brief and informative biology lesson he told me that I had at some point during the last three weeks at the gym, inflicted quite a serious injury on my arm. His words, I’m not being melodramatic. The damage has caused my collar bone to swell and deform a little bit (which is quite noticeable when you look for it) and that external manifestation of my injury may never wholly go away. It should take about two weeks of rest for the pain to stop (if it doesn’t I am to return to the docs) and then it can take up to three months for it to heal up.

I need to stop agitating the arm, I rightly assumed that the weights were now well and truly off the exercise rota for a while. But the Doctor then crossed off the rowing machine and worst of all, swimming, from my list of activities. Though strangely he didn’t think kayaking was too bad an activity due to the type of movement my arm would go through while paddling.

I was pretty gutted actually. Mentally casting my mind around the gym, I think all I can do is the treadmill, the cross trainer and the bikes. I’ll have to get used to the sauna and Jacuzzi as well.

I think I’m going to have to speak to fitness Stu and get him to completely re-design my fitness plan. I wonder how differing programmes will affect Nigel and my preparedness for the DW.