[CAUT] Lessons from shoulder surgery

[Jim Busby]

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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