Rotator Cuffs and Valuable Lessons

When my roommate burst into my room with a freshly purchased supplement that claimed to produce an immediate 10 percent increase in strength, I was skeptical but curious. I had lifted weights on a regular basis before, but I had stopped working out entirely about a year ago. And yet I wanted to see how well this supplement really worked. So my roommate and I downed our servings and headed out to the gym, throwing caution to the wind.

In my prime of lifting weights I could bench press about 220 pounds. After I got a girlfriend and stopped working out, my bench press max fell to about 185. In my head I did some quick math and figured that a 10 percent increase in strength would be about 205 pounds on the bar. I warmed up a little with some lighter weights and finally loaded it up to 205. I remember my roommate uttering some words of concern. But why would I have listened to him? The guarantee was on the bottle.

I picked up the weight rather easily. I went down with it and started to go back up. It hurt. I didn't know where it was hurting but I had to draw strength from all over my body to get the weight up. When I racked the weight and sat up, I felt light headed and my body felt drained.

The next day rolled around and my shoulder started to hurt. The pain was ever-so-slight at first. It was almost more of an annoyance than a true concern. I figured it was just unused muscles being sore about having to be used again. But the next day the pain was different and unmistakable. I had injured my shoulder in the past from overuse and was afraid I had torn the rotator cuff in my shoulder, which is a very serious injury that requires surgery. However, the pain had always gone away after a couple of days. But this time the pain was worse, far worse. I couldn't lift my arm forward or to the side and I certainly couldn't lift it past my shoulder. There was a dull pain shooting through every fiber in my shoulder when I tried to use it at all. The whole day I left it dead by my side.

As the days passed the pain only got worse. I could barely move my right arm at all. Working in a restaurant, carrying drinks and orders didn't help it much either. On Sunday I decided to make the call to get something done about it. I called my mom. She made me an appointment at Atlantic Orthopedic for Friday. I was nervous about what an X-ray might show. I did not want to have to go through the pain of a shoulder surgery and I certainly didn't want to have to go through the recovery time. I was dissappointed in myself and angry at the supplement that had given me false hope.

Things started to look up for me, however. By Friday the pain had almost completely gone out of my shoulder. I had a huge gain in the mobility of arm motions. When I spoke to the doctor about the X-ray, he said I had something called rotator cuff tendonitis, a condition that is not as bad as a tear but still quite painful. It involves the tendons becoming sore from stretching during use. The tendons wear over the bone in my shoulder and cause immense pain. The good news was that all it needed was rest and that I was already well on the to healing.

Leaving the doctor's office I felt alive. In less than a week I had gotten over a shoulder injury and was finally feeling like myself again. And then I started to notice the people around me. Young and old, they were all wearing casts or braces. Some of them looked like they had injuries that would take months to heal and some that looked as though they never would. None of them deserved to be there. I wished they could all be walking out of there as happy and healthy as I was. I felt an overwhelming sense of sympathy rush through me. We only have one body in our lifetime, and that day I decided to not take mine for granted anymore.