So. The 21/22 summer has truly been endless. But my pride has taken a blow.
I have never had so many surfs in my life as I have had over the four months from December 21 to April 22.
I wouldn’t say it’s been perfect a lot. But there have been average days mixed with good ones and the occasional outstanding ones. And it’s been nearly every day.
Before work. After work. Multiple surfs on the weekend and on holidays. The occasional lunchtime surf. I reckon I’ve averaged four surfs a week for four months.
At my age, something had to give.
It was my shoulder… and the pride in my ability to keep at it. I have to accept that I’m solely responsible.
Before I got into surfing seriously at 13 I’d been a competitive swimmer. Things crossed over for a couple of years as I moved from the pool to being a clubbie (lifeguard) at the beach. A year or so of taking out the mals from the club shed saw me ditch lifesaving, rugby and pretty much everything else for surfing. My shoulders have been under strain since then.
Swimming and surfing put similar stresses on the shoulders. I hadn’t been doing the exercises to counteract those stresses. Consequently, the essentially non-stop surfing of this last summer aggravated what I had always thought was a niggly rotator cuff injury that had bothered me on and off for a couple of years.
It manifested itself firstly in some knotty shoulder and back muscle problems. A few weeks of physio kept me surfing and actually did away with the problem. For a while. Then, across a couple of weeks the niggle came back. Then it got worse.
Easter Friday, I began to lose the ability to move my arm, while the pain shifted from the trapezius of my neck and shoulder, to what felt like my deltoid (that muscle that wraps over your shoulder), and down to my bicep as well.
Source: OpenStax, CC BY 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
On Easter Monday I woke up after a fitful and painful sleep to spasming, paralysing pain for 15 minutes before it settled back to a painful ache around my shoulder joint and in my bicep. I could barely move my arm in any direction.
Tuesday came and if was off to the doctor. Anti-inflamatories to reduce the swelling, Tramadol to deal with the pain. An x-ray, ultrasound and bloods the investigative tests.
Bloods were good—no indication of infection. Ultrasound showed some ‘minor’ long-term wear and tear—not unusual considering the years of water activity. My bursa showed signs of calcification and inflammation; calcification a bodily reaction to trauma. Tendons were in the right place but there were some issues. Some fluid in the longhead biceps detected. In medical parlance: Calcific subacromial – subdeltoid bursitis of moderate severity with symptomatic impingement, and supraspinatus and infraspinatus calcific tendinitis.
Interestingly, up to the time of the ultrasound, my movement had shown significant improvement. But after, I had a slight relapse with an increase in pain and less movement in the arm. It could have been the various positions I had to go through for the ultrasound scan.
A second visit to the doctor gave me the alternatives.
Option A: A conservative approach of rest, anti-inflammatories and an open invitation to look at it again in two to three weeks.
Option B: a steroid and local anaesthetic injection into the affected area, guided by ultrasound. I chose the former.
Now, close to a month later—with no surfing—I have full movement back in the arm, no pain and only slight discomfort occasionally, depending on what position I put my arm into.
In the meantime, I’ve come across a book that going to be extremely helpful for more than just my shoulder problem. It’s called Surf Survival: The Surfer’s Health Handbook. It’s written by three medical doctors who are surfers: Andrew Nathanson, Clayton Everline and Mark Renneker. It reminds me of the SAS Survival Guide; a book that gave you all the information you needed to help you survive in the wild.
This one has got exercises for my shoulder and much more. Even just with a skim, I know this book is going to be useful to me for the rest of my life, not least because it has given me a mantra from none other than the Pipe Master, Gerry Lopez, himself:
Surf to surf tomorrow.
Advice I’m going to heed from this time on. I can’t afford to keep thinking I’m still young, and behave recklessly any more.
Now it’s time to get back into the waves.
ENDS
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