One Month Later.....

Among many other things going on today, I had a follow up with Dr. Trumble to see exactly how this little project is going.  

It was nice to be able to make it into the gym before-hand just to get a little activity into my body before I showed the professionals just how well I thought this was going.  

I thought the first thing they would look at would be the scar to make sure it was healing okay, but it was actually all based on mobility, strength, flexibility and other things.  The first thing they did was take a look at the actual bone to make sure that nothing was thin or strange around the tunnel (remember, the figure 8).  They did that through a machine I've referenced before called the fluoroscan.  This time, I managed to get a picture of this thing.

They did a minor stress test to make sure that the little gap that was there before no longer existed.  Remember when that ligament was torn, every time I moved my arm side to side, there would be a variable gap that occurred in the joint. So, under the fluoroscan they moved my elbow back and forth a bit to make sure there were no gaps in there.  Of course there weren't which was awesome.  That means that the surgery really was successful in completing its most basic job. See below...

See the little tunnel up there on the right? That's where the figure 8 is to hold this sucker in place.  You can also see how tight the joint is now too.  That gap used to be up to twice that big...occasionally more. 

They followed that up with some very basic stuff in my forearm to make sure everything was interacting properly between the elbow and the hand. They followed that up with a lot of strength tests to see how my muscles were holding up. I had to spread my fingers against resistance, move my wrist up and down with resistance, and then various grip tests.  

They were more than pleased with the results. I go back in six weeks to re-assess. Any time your surgeon grins ear to ear and doesn't talk in a condescending tone, you're probably ok.

Unfortunately, I am stuck in this brace for another two weeks. Oh well. There are worse things than that. It is awfully frustrating though.  I mean, it's impossible to wear long sleeve shirts and sweatshirts with this dopey thing on.  Plus, the Iron Man jokes will only get worse when the Avengers movie shows up.

Back to PT in the morning where I get to learn some resistance band training! 

Oh, one last picture.  Remember when I said this guy wrote the book on these surgeries?  Here's proof!