Returning to the Stack

Thank you all for your patience with my Substack recently. I am now six weeks out from surgery. Recovery is going well, but it’s still super slow.

I basically destroyed my shoulder during a bench press at the gym. I did a set at 240 and I felt great. No pain, no difficulty, and plenty of strength in reserve. I added 20 pounds, unracked the bar, dropped it fine, and then started lifting. About halfway up, my left arm kept going… and my right arm started slowly dropping. It wasn’t a strength issue, either. My shoulder totally gave out.

It took four weeks to get my insurance to approve an MRI. When I got into the doctor’s office a few days later for the results, I heard words you really never want to hear after an MRI. “There’s a lot going on in there!”

There’s a lot going on in there!

The MRI revealed that I had:

• A full supraspinatus tear.

• A full infraspinatus tear.

• A partial subscapularis tear.

• A posterior labrum tear.

I went in for surgery on September 10th. During surgery, it turned out that it was a bit worse even than the MRI made it look. Of course I had the full supraspinatus and full infraspinatus tears. But there are three prongs of the subscapularis. My “partial” subscapularis tear was actually three of those prongs fully torn.

Also, it turns out that the infraspinatus was retracted - indicating it was an old injury. I’m pretty sure that happened about two years ago. I thought it hadn’t been that bad because I’d mostly recovered, but clearly I turned out to be wrong.

Recovery is going well, but super slowly. I’m six weeks post surgery now. I have to wear my sling full time for another two and a half weeks. Range of motion is still very limited, but is increasing with every physical therapy session. I’m not allowed to reach above my head until the sling comes off, and even then I have to take it slow and still not put weight on my shoulder for another month or two. But all of that is pretty normal. The recovery is proceeding well and on track, I just wish it were faster.

I can type now in a somewhat limited fashion, so I’ll be returning to posting. But don’t expect three posts a week just yet. It’ll probably be one post a week at first, but I’ll be ramping it up as my shoulder improves. I hope to return to three posts a week by the end of the year.

Due to my shoulder injury, Morgon and I have postponed the Knights of Washington Kickstarter campaign. We plan to run it early in 2026. So if you tuned in here to follow the campaign in real time as I promised, fear not! You haven’t missed anything.

Above all, thank you for your patience with me. The last few months have been a bit rough. I’m glad to see so many of you are still here!