HPChiro Blog: July 2009 | Health and Performance Chiropractic

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Dr. Seth Hosmer is the founder and owner of Health & Performance Chiropractic, and has been working with endurance athletes for over 10 years. (more about Seth)

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Green Means Go

I don't have any good pictures from this visit to the ortho yesterday, just good news. Healing is going well and we went through some basic range of motion tests to make sure that things were moving well and nothing was getting hung up on the hardware. All's good. I was cleared to ride outside with two recommendations:
1. don't race
2. don't crash

I think recommendation 1 is negotiable, and so hopefully I can get back in shape in time for cross. The plate comes out sometime in October.

So I ended up doing my first significant ride outside in what feels like forever today. It was good to get back out there. This whole thing has made me re-discover what I like best about bikes. Riding. Racing is fun but in the end it comes down to just getting out and going for a ride.

Field Trip: K&K Forgeworks, Portland, OR

I took a field trip last week to visit with Fergus of K&K Forgeworks in Portland, OR. Fergus has been helping with a number of projects, including a rack for our kettlebells at HPC, and most recently development of some soft-tissue mobilization instruments. The instruments are being developed for instrument-assisted soft tissue techniques. The goal is to come up with a set of instruments that have the weight, feel and ergonomics that suits our needs. Healthcare providers have been using these types of techniques for thousands of years. The old school technique is called Gua-Sha. Newer versions of instrument assisted soft-tissue mobilization include the Graston Technique and Sound Assisted Soft-Tissue Mobilization.

Fergus in his element.
There are a lot of ways to hurt yourself in this place.

Originally, I was there to check in on our design for a kettlebell rack, and also fine-tune some of the edges on some of the instruments that we had been working on...Fergus suggested that I give it a try myself, and fine-tune some of the edges:

Using a a grinding wheel to fine-tune edges

It was a lot of fun working on the instruments, and learning a bit about how various grinding and polishing tools work. I emerged with all my fingers, vision and hearing intact...looking forward to my next opportunity to get back in the shop and work some more on the next prototype. More ideas to try!

I get by with a little help from my friends

A broken clavicle really isn't that big of a deal. Really. It is uncomfortable, but you're basically able to get out and about and do what you need to do. The only thing I'd really like to be doing that I cannot currently do is ride my bike on the road. I could be riding the trainer...but lets leave it at that. I could, but will not. Unless I get really desperate. For now I'm happy taking my first significant break from the bike in close to 15 years, watching the Tour, and enjoying time with the family.

So, back to the title of my post, a sincere thank you to everybody that has stepped up and helped me get by! Dr. Noel Snodgrass and Dr. Martin Hughes have graciously provided the muscle for treatments that I cannot do with the broken wing.

It has been a while since I've been able to do regular posts, as I migrated my web host from my Evil Big Box host to local, friendly AcornHost. Besides being local, AcornHost also uses green source energy. Along the way, there were the inevitable bumps in the road...so another thank you goes out to Kristin Wille, who put my web site together for me, and managed the switch to the new host. Yet another thank you goes out to Matt Haughey...he set up this blog for me in the first place, then graciously helps me fine-tune it as needed.

I was doing regular blog posts about the clavicle injury and missed a few milestones with the web migration, so we'll pick that back up here. I had my first follow-up post surgery a week ago friday, and everything looked good. The surgeon told me to go ahead and take off the tegaderm and steri strips:

The scar is tiny! I was expecting
an earthworm sized line.

While we were there, we took an x-ray to see how everything was coming together. He explained to me how things looked when he went in to do the surgery: more pieces than we could see on the initial x-ray, but he was able to pull them all together:

Clavicle hook-plate doing its job.

My next follow up is in a week, so hopefully I'll get good news at that visit too. My main limitation at this point is to keep the elbow below 90 degrees and no lifting anything heavy. I am really really hoping that at the next visit I am cleared to ride outside so I can start at least riding to work again.

The Waiting Games

Waiting Game 1: Waiting for all the bugs to work out of the system so I can post photos again...I migrated my web site from one host to another and there are always hang-ups with this type of thing.
Waiting Game 2: Waiting for the clavicle to heal! I had a follow up with my ortho last Friday. He took an x-ray...will post it when the blog is back to 100% but for now I can't upload pix...and everything looks good in there. He explained a bit more about what he found during the procedure (more fractures) and what he had to do (cut some muscles, Ug). Right now the clavicle itself feels fine, it is just the deltoid muscle that is painful as it has been cut, and feels like it is being impinged by the plate. Right now I think that is the only thing keeping me from feeling 100%. But, that is probably a good thing b/c if it felt great, I'd probably be using my shoulder more than I should be.
Waiting Game 3: Every day, waiting to see the Tour, and hoping that nobody spills the beans about what happens in the stage. Yesterday, at the office, somebody let it slip by saying that the break stayed away for the finish...he tried to cover it up and say he was just kidding. That worked until I was actually watching the stage, and with 5ks to go realized that he had let that vital detail slip. ARG!