[CAUT] Lessons from shoulder surgery

[Jim Busby]

Hi David,

Thanks.

Well, I certainly wouldn't want to tune for anyone "big name" right now. It takes longer and is sometimes frustrating. It's almost as bad as having to write left handed as far as awkwardness goes, but the ear and "intuition" of knowing where to set the pin is still there. Just harder to get there.

Have a wonderful Christmas!
JIm

________________________________
From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Porritt, David
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 12:54 PM
To: College and University Technicians
Subject: Re: [CAUT] Lessons from shoulder surgery

Jim:

I hope your recovery continues to go well and that your ambidextrous approach to our work will prevent a repeat in the future.  I wish I had done the left hand bit, but I think at my age that's not going to happen.  Can you do a left-handed tuning for a concert that wouldn't worry you?

Have a great Christmas.

dp

David M. Porritt, RPT
dporritt at smu.edu

From: caut-bounces at ptg.org [mailto:caut-bounces at ptg.org] On Behalf Of Jim Busby
Sent: Tuesday, December 18, 2007 1:22 PM
To: College and University Technicians
Subject: [CAUT] Lessons from shoulder surgery

All,

Last Tuesday (Dec. 11) I went in for shoulder surgery and came back today with some things I'd like to share. In the surgery the doctors removed calcium buildups (I DON'T know all their fancy names!), some arthritis, bone spurs, and shortened/smoothed the bone around the ball joint (hey, that's what it looked like to me). Anyway, the excess bone was digging into the rotator cuff (sp?) and soon would have required replacement and/or other major work. "It was tearing through like a knife". All I know is that it hurt to tune.

After one week, I'm a bit sore but back to work! If I had waited another 3 or 4 months they told me it would have been MUCH worse! What I want to share to you;


 1.  Don't put it off! It may get way worse.
 2.  Find a great surgeon who won't just give you cortisone shots month after month. (This guy does the BYU athletes and my doctor friends and nurses say he's the best.)
 3.  Surgery really wasn't that bad, although the first 3 days after I wanted to die...
 4.  Learn to tune left handed. Today I tuned a piano left handed (no problem because I've learned to) and pounding the key with my right hand was no problem. It's impossible for me to tune right handed for another 3 or 4 weeks. (Hurts like hell to even raise it!)

You can read all these articles on how to "avoid" such surgeries but in my studies I found that;

1.                   Part of this comes with age/work and is somewhat inevitable for certain people
2.                   Part of it is in the genes. Bone spurs, arthritis, is in my family...
3.                   Exercises, techniques, etc. can help, but sometimes 20,000 piano tunings and age win out.

Prognosis? 10 to 20 years of pain free tuning! Well, after another few weeks of torture...

I also learned I'm one tough buck. They gave me pain pills but I'd rather take the pain than put that crap in my body. It always makes me feels much worse in the long run, and I can't make the hour long drive to work with that in my system. They were amazed that I didn't take anything and that my recovery was so fast.

Jim Busby BYU

p.s. I'm 52 years old.


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