I love the sound of the orchestra. I love the music written for the orchestra. I love the crazy thing that goes on when people come together and play as an orchestra.
I remember it vividly. It was and overhead backhand shot and I won the point. It was a winner. But I felt a ... Something. A pain in my shoulder that I never felt before. I had the MRI and I had a complete tear in the rotator cuff and a tear in the biceps tendon. Also some bone spurs inside the shoulder. Sort of the old man's trifecta of the shoulder. That's when I went to Dr. Herbenick to get it fixed.
Neal told me that his shoulder had been bothering him for quite some time and it was a challenge for him to both do his day-to-day activities and his work
There were gestures, if I reached this way towards the cellos, some nights it would be ehh don't do that again. Or don't go that far. But I was still working ... And it would be sore afterwards and I would ice it and stuff like that. There were definitely things that I couldn't do with the same abandon and sort of naturalness. I would sort of in the back of my mind, I was thinking, is this going to hurt when I do this?
I think there's always a baseline amount of concern that somebody has about their livelihood and we try to be sensitive to that and ask about what their livelihood is. Of course, I knew Mr. Gittleman and what he did, and that certainly played a role in our decision as to what, how we might treat him, what we might do. We had a conversation based on that with the patient, and certainly we discussed that.
I always had complete confidence in what he was telling me because he sort of projects that sort of calm, focused, this is what it is, this is how you fix it and it'll be fixed.
In Neal's case, we thought the pathology was certainly bad enough that he would require something procedural relatively early. Again, primarily because of what he did and his activity level, what his expectations were, we try and match those things and make a good decision for each individual patient.
The injury was in January. March was when it was definitively decided that it needed to be surgically repaired and that we were looking at basically a three month recovery period. So the trick at that point then was to get to the end of the season, which ended in basically at the beginning of June. So, what do I have to do to get to the end of June so that I can have the summer off and then hopefully be back in September for when the season begins?
When we plan surgery for a patient, any patient, our goal is to restore people back to their normal anatomy regardless of what they do. In large part, that's what we do every single time. Not to minimize his activity level or what he does for a living, we take it as seriously for every person that comes through as if they were a conductor, as if they were a high level athlete. This is somebody's shoulder. This is somebody's livelihood likely, and we make sure that every single person has the same treatment, which is excellent treatment.
The interesting thing was lots of people who I spoke to, when they heard that I'm going to have rotator cuff surgery and they all said, oh it's going to hurt! That's bad! And the rehab! I really didn't have any pain to speak of. At all.
I always found Neal to be incredibly positive. He was seemingly very task-oriented, which we see patients who are like that do extremely well because they take their rehabilitation very seriously. And so, his positivity, his optimism, and then his work ethic, that's a good combination to have in a patient.
Basically my job during the summer was to get better and do the rehab and do the exercises and do some studying to get musically ready for the season. My goal was when we got to September 1st, that I should be ready. Or September 7th, I think, or 8th was my first rehearsal ... Was to be ready to get back to work.
Well, everyone at Premiere Health was great to me. The surgery went wonderfully. While I was under, my wife was walking around the grounds. Walking on the trails around Miami Valley South. Everything happened exactly the way they said it would happen. They got me back to where I needed to be when I needed to be there. I couldn't be happier with the result.
