Daily Success February 25 – Very Good. It was right in the middle of the range, so getting to Outstanding was not in the cards.

Yesterday

Yesterday had too much angsting over Sam. A lot of emails, and a post on the ndnation Back Room. The Back Room came through with two (so far) suggestions. Or one suggestion and one lawyer who just might be the right guy, an ND grad from back in ‘94 and practicing with a large Texas firm.

Until I spent real time on ndnation, I had no idea just how powerful an alumni network can be. Quint Hawthorn did me a huge favor suggesting a master’s from Notre Dame.

Exercise is starting to come back together. In a surprising result, I was able to walk on the treadmill for 1.51 miles in a single go yesterday. That was almost shocking progress as progress has been frustratingly slow for the last weeks, months even. Maybe, just maybe, Monika is at the edge of success. Knock on concrete.

While I’m SURE that upper body strength exercises are out, I was able to do a full set of upper body physical therapy without difficulty. One of the motions that I would have preferred to do was painful, I think due to the torn rotator cuff, so I substituted a stretch for it.

Good progress on Poly-Sci and Spanish, too.

Today

Today includes a planned Teams chat with an attorney in Texas. Hopefully he will have some good advice and a reasonable price (joke). A chat with the fellow who was recommended will almost certainly be Monday at the earliest as there were no emails on the firm’s website; I filled out the inquiry form.
In other activities, I’ll be back in the gym, Spanish, Poli-Sci.

And, of course, today is our Sunday brunch of pancakes and bacon. Something a little special as a couple.

The Future

The situation with Sam should start to come into focus. That will help. A lot.

Hopefully, tomorrow will bring a lot of clarity to the coming days and, possibly, weeks. The schedule for my surgery is uppermost in my mind. I want to get it over with, but if I can’t get in before, say the end of next week, I might defer it for a couple days to attend the Gathering. I really want to do that; as Jan says, those are my people.

My biggest problem with the surgery is not the surgery, it’s the post-op period. Knowing that there will be some pain is not important. Knowing that I’ll have uncomfortable rehab to do is similarly not important. I have doubts that they will have any rehab exercises or stretches that I don’t already do, or, at worst, have not done a lot of over the years. Shoulder trouble is not new. I’ve been doing shoulder physical therapy for almost a quarter century.

Frankly, I’m a bit frightened by what happened because I’m afraid it will happen again.

To start with, the lift I was doing when the biceps tendon tore was only possible because Monika’s work with laser and (mostly) shock wave therapy brought the shoulder to a state of health that I could do it. Two years ago, shoulder pain would have prevented me from doing the lift. With my shoulder feeling healthy, the best that it had been in decades, I had worked up to the 30-pound weights because the 25-pound ones were too easy. Is shoulder health a Giffen Good?

Beyond that, I don’t heal as well as once I did. Rupturing the tendon was a shock as that possibility had never occurred to me. The fear is that this will become limiting; I have similar fears about my knee and back. Working through those fears is as much a challenge as any in the “I’m going back” struggle.