It has been a while (like 4 months) since I have updated on my progress, so here's an update about what has happened in that time. I was officially discharged from physical therapy in early June. It was a little earlier than planned, but I had a full summer ahead of me, and I did not have time to be driving to Boston and back. By that time I had reached nearly full range of motion (I was off by a few degrees), but was still working on strength and endurance. In mid-June, after a week long family trip to Ireland, I started my summer job working at an all boys overnight summer camp.
There is no better strength and endurance training than working at an all boys overnight camp. On top of my normal physical therapy, which I continued on my own, I was doing everything from making lanyards to frog catching to archery, and even some heavy lifting (wooden war canoes are not light). The only thing I didn't do that I might have done I had 2 perfect shoulders my whole life was to help lift the giant dock sections out of the lake, I decided that was a little overkill. Instead, I stuck to moving cinder blocks and making sure the docks in the water didn't float away. Of course, stories had to be told about how I got the scars. It turns out I was once a professional MMA fighter. My shoulder wasn't perfect the whole time, there were a lot of days that I was pretty sore and very happy that ibuprofen existed. But sore is okay, I mean, I basically took a year off from physical activity and threw myself into a situation where that is all I did. To be honest, there were plenty of days where my shoulder was not the only part of my body that was sore.
After camp, we drove back to Colorado (our new home base) where I spent a month getting to know the area. There, I also had a check up and two physical therapy appointments for both shoulders. I now have some new exercises to further strengthen some of the muscles in the back of my shoulders and ensure that both shoulders are in perfect condition. They have been working very well in eliminating the few small issues of random tightness and mild pain that I was having in both shoulders about once a week before starting them. Since then, I have started school again, with a slightly revised schedule because of not taking 2 classes last semester. This basically means a heavier class load this semester, but it's not to bad, and I like all my classes. Overall, my shoulder is doing really well and doesn't really affect my life much anymore apart from the at home physical therapy, and in my opinion, those 15 minutes a day are definitely worth it.
