Sailing ships....

All ships will eventually sail. Some find themselves with tragic endings. Others sail on to glory. Others still just sail through their lifetimes with nothing but memories and stories of the many passengers. The cycling season for 2024 is one of those ships.....

....and it is rapidly approaching an iceberg......

Many months ago I visited a doctor about tennis elbow. I was hoping they would do a simple injection and I would move on with my life. I guess they don't do shots in the elbow....and I guess the nitro patches I used for a month were not enough to promote the necessary healing. 

Elbow, in general, feels better. But if I used my arm in any fashion my elbow just aches. Silly really. To think that raking leaves back in October would still be causing me issues. In general tennis elbow will take 6 months to heal. And while I have seen progress, I am not healed. The aching and sharp pains take off from time to time. So I visited the ortho again and he sent me for an MRI. 

Those results came in as not great. I have a tear in one of the tendons. Upon receiving these results I started to do my own research. There are 3 or 4 likely routes to achieve success. 

1. Rest

2. Blading

3. Minor surgery

4. Major surgery

Option 1 didn't work. Option 2 isn't offered by my surgeon (and is a new procedure with mixed results). Option 3 is a less invasive option where they go in and clean out the area. Then they inject my own spun down blood cells into the injured area to promote healing. The success rate on the size of tear I have is generally 30-40%. Not great. So, option 4 it is. This means they go in and anchor the tendon to the bone. It is more invasive and the recovery time is clearly longer. 

3 months or so. That is the recovery time. I will be in a cast for 2 weeks, then a wrist brace for another 4-6 weeks before finally being able to slowly work back to normal activity. 3 months puts us around 4th of July. 

Season blown up. 

Life comes at us I guess. This is just another bump in the road. But I am getting fairly tired of the bumps. I know we all have them, and we all deal with them differently. 

Stress is up. Weight is up. Excuses are abounding. Mood isn't great. 

The road to recovery starts in a few weeks. 

Side note.....not sure how much longer Singletrack chronicles will be a thing. Could be time for this ship to sail as well.......