That's the name of the procedure that I will be undergoing in a couple of weeks. But let me back up and tell you how we got there.

Let's start at 8:30am. I was very early to my Orthopedic appointment, but the good Doctor brought me in anyway. He looked at my MRI, took some notes about what happened and basically told me that there was no reason I should be trying to lift that much weight. "You're too small to be lifting that much weight," he remarked. I wanted to say, "Too small? That's why I'm trying to lift that much weight... so I won't be too small." However, I held my tongue because he's right. What the hell is a 37 year old man doing trying to get bigger and lift more weight than his old joints can bare? It's my idea of what my body should look like that needs to change, not my body. And here I've damaged it pretty good. Well, I guess I've forced myself into a change now, huh?

Um... sorry I got off track... So the doctor tells me that he doesn't do arthroscopic surgery and he really doesn't want to make incision through my tattoos (he actually recognized the Northwest Coast Art). He informs me he's going to refer me to someone who is an expert in arthroscopic surgery. After 30 minutes of phone calls (can you believe the amount of work a doctor put into that?), he tells me to get downtown as soon as I can. This new Orthopedic Surgeon is going to see when I get there, because he deemed this an "acute" case. Otherwise, I would not have been seen until November.

I make my way downtown, fill out the paperwork and wait. He receptionist calls on me after an hour and asks me to go across the hall for x-rays. After that, I wait again. At noon, they call me in. The doctor is very nice and even has good social skills. However, he sucks at explaining, to a person who has never had surgery, what exactly he is going to do and why. So as I ask questions about the "biceps tenodesis" and get the response of, "just believe me it's better that we do it this way," I can't help but feel scared. Luckily, the nurse came in to schedule the surgery and explained to me what was going to happen.

So what does it mean for me? Six weeks of my arm in a sling. No working out and even after that, no heavy lifting. Probably pain, but I can handle it. The part that worries me: not being able to sleep because I can't get my shoulder in a comfortable position. Well, that and the other stuff like, possible nerve damage or any other number of bad things that can happen to you in surgery. I won't be able to lift my son and hold him without hurting for a while. I'm just overall scared that I'll be worse after the surgery.

I want to start be saying that having problems like mine are good problems to have. I keep telling myself, just as a reminder that it isn't that bad. However, the feelings some of these events conjure up are nasty and gut wrenching (such as the purchasing the lot). This is the problem with stress, it can be caused when good things happen too.

Some good things that have happened in the last month:
1. Purchased the property that I'm going to build my home on;
2. My son's birthday;
3. My anniversary;
4. My birthday;
5. My wife's birthday
6. My father's recovery from surgery; and
7. My son taking his first steps.

Some not-so-good things that have happened to me in last month:
1. My father's heart surgery;
2. The contractor nickel and diming us on the property on the day of closing;
3. Poison ivy;
4. Prednisolone;
5. Three of my team of 10 have left;
6. Two more leaving next week;
7. Increased demand on all of my employees, which means increased demand on their supervisor; and
8. Blueprints that are in production and scheduled to be done at the end of this month.

There are more but I would rather not bore you. As you can see, even the no-so-good things are that bad. I have stress from my job, but I have a job (pay is great, benefits are great, etc.). So I know I shouldn't complain.

I wrote that post last Friday.

To add injury (literally) to insult, I offer the following.

On Monday, I was working out and decided that I was going to max out on bench press. I warmed up. Started with 135lbs., then 225 lbs. and then 275 lbs. It was just going up too easy. I wanted to hit 315lbs. So I called Renee down to spot me. I lowered the bar (even as I lowered it I thought, "no problem") and as I pushed... this wonderful "skrunch" sound comes from my shoulder. Renee says, "Are you going to lift this?" I tell her I can't and that I think I hurt my shoulder pretty bad. She says, "well, I can't lift this off of you." So I push through it and she pulls. My shoulder feels weird and, as I move it, I feel little stuff moving around in there. I can't lift my arm over my head without extreme pain. Bad sign!

I go to the Doctor on Tuesday. He says that it could be a labrum tear and that I have anterior subluxation (dislocation) of the humeral head. He lifts my arm (don't worry it didn't hurt... only when I lift my arm is when it hurts) and moves it back into place. When he lowers it, the shoulder moves back out. Bad sign! He orders an MRI.

I have an MRI of my shoulder the next day (Wednesday). It was a pretty interesting experience. The sound of the MRI was soothing and I would almost fall asleep. After an hour and half, they were done. (FYI: If you are claustrophobic... you will freak out in one of these machines... but to me it was very relaxing.)

Yesterday, I received the results from my Doctor. They are as follows:

"There is a large full-thickness tear of the supraspinatus tendon."

Great. Just f'ing great.

However, the good news is that it isn't a labrum tear.

Monday, I see an orthopedic surgeon to find out what we need to do.

Yes, my son has hit the ripe old age of 1. We can no longer call him Baby Dane (although he will always be my baby). He has earned his right to be called a toddler. We had his birthday party on Saturday. Lots of family and friends showed up and Dane made out like a bandit.

The best part was the cake eating. Dane has not had anything like that before and I was a little worried about how his body would react to all the sugars. He started by shoving the cake into his mouth like all kids do, but he stopped, licked it with his tongue and giggled the whole time. He finally started to push more into his mouth, until it was full, chew and shovel more in. 30 minutes later he was wiped out and took a nap while everyone said their goodbyes.

One of his presents was this "big wheel" (I don't know what else to call it). He can't reach the pedals but he loves to ride on it and be pulled around. He presses the buttons (vrrooom vrrooom). I pull him one way and powerslide (errrrrt) to the side. He giggles and laughs! He also received books and an abundance of annoying-noise making toys (luckily they have on/off switches). His favorite seems to a truck and ball he received from Darla (a friend of ours who is a nanny.. she would know what he wants). All in all, it was a good day.

Darla and Kevin (Peanut) stayed the night and after Dane went to bed, we drank margaritas and watched Spongebob Squarepants The Movie. Well... they did, I feel asleep in the recliner. That thing always puts me to sleep during movies.

Been awhile, eh? The last couple of weeks have been pretty eventful. I'm not about to squeeze everything on one post, so it may take several to get everyone up to speed. So let's get started...

First question you may have is why am I up at 3am? Two weekends ago, I was helping my Dad out on the farm. After his surgery, he can't do as much and he need to get the cows out to another pasture. He also has crops in the field so we (I) had to put up some electric fence and clean up around the fences that were already up (FYI: electric fences don't work if there are weeds, vines, small trees, etc., growing around them because if they touch the wire it grounds the fence and big moo-moos have no incentive to stay away).

Putting up he new fence wasn't bad. Before Dad's surgery, he had brush-hogged a lane through the woods. I just drove steel posts, put up the wire and stretched it. Of course, nothing was grounding out the wire, because I put up the fence where the wasn't anything to touch it. So, again, that was the easy part.

Next came walking the fence line and removing any brush grounding the wire. I would like to take some time here and mention that it was about 96 degrees those two days. And, where the fence I put up was in the woods, the fence line that was already up was in the wide open spaces, along gravel roads, that placed me into the path of the ever relentless sun. So, walking along the fence with my Dad driving the truck (he wasn't even supposed to be doing that yet, but he felt guilty that I was working and he wasn't), pruning shears in one hand and a dull corn knife (a butter knife would have been sharper and more effective) in the other, I wacked, cut and beat into submission, all of the undergrowth.

Did I mention that part of that undergrowth included poison ivy? Wack, cut and beat the undergrowth may have been, but the poison ivy was not giving up without a fight (although I didn't know how good of a fight it as putting up until a couple of days later). My sweet concerned Dad would say (after I was up to my neck in it), "look out son... that's poison ivy there." Now, I had long pants on, a t-shirt and gloves. I thought I was pretty safe. And besides, I haven't had poison ivy since I was a kid and I've camped, hiked, etc., so I thought there may be a chance that it wouldn't effect me if it did come into contact with my skin.

Well, to make a long story long, I had poison ivy and bug bites. The poison ivy was so bad that I would wake up scratching. It spread from my arms to my hands. I thought that after a week it would go away, but last weekend it was so bad I couldn't stand it. Tuesday, I went to the doctor. He gave me a shot of and prescription for prednisolone. Hence, no sleep ('til {guitar riff} Brooklyn) last night or tonight. I awoke from my blissful slumber Tuesday night at 3:30am and fell back to sleep at 5:00am. Tonight, I am WIDE awake!

Good news...my poison ivy isn't bothering me at all.

A lot has been going on, so I haven't had a lot of time to blog. And today we're having Dane's First Birthday Party, so you're not going to get a whole lot out of me today either. However, I wanted post the pictures of what our house is going to look like. I'm extremely excited about these drawings! It makes it more real then just a floor plan.

Front View

Left Side View

Rear View

Right Side View

So what do you think?