I’ve just had the unexpected luxury of a fortnight of (relative) leisure.
On the Thursday evening just before Easter I moved a bit awkwardly and felt a “pop” followed by stabbing pain where the bicep abuts the elbow on my left arm.
As it was rather worse on Friday morning, with me unable to flex the arm without a lot of pain, it was off to the local minor injuries unit. A couple of x-rays and hours later, the diagnosis was torn muscle! Which was what I suspected. I was provided with one of those wonderful cheesecloth slings and prescribed rest and anti-inflammatories!
As I was in no state to ride a bike, I had to cancel two days training over the weekend – fortunately I managed to get hold of the trainees to do so before they set off.
The good news was that the weather was pretty good down here in the SE corner, so managed to get out and do a bit of walking (nothing too serious!) at the coast or up on the Downs with the friends that were down for the weekend and got a chance to play with my new “crossover” digital camera (memo to self – read manual!).
The latest update is that I’ve been signed off from the injuries unit and the inflammation has now gone down. Unfortunately that means I can see and feel a very distinct “dip” about the size of a marble in the bicep on the inside of the arm, which is slightly alarming – presumably where the muscle tore.
I’m still struggling to lift or carry anything vaguely heavy where the forearm needs to be flexed (lugging a laptop lefthanded is still painful). I’ve not tried riding the bike yet, I still can’t pull on the handbrake on the car though I can just about change gear.
This could be a longer recovery than I feared. Ho hum.
I’ve got training provisionally planned for the coming weekend… I’ll update people as I can. Watch this space!
You have what sounds like a ‘rupture of the long head of the biceps tendon’. I know it sounds terrible, but it should steadily improve, and in my experience, function is nearly always regained. It may take 6 weeks or so. You may benefit from input from a physio. You could seek the opinion of an Orthopaedic Surgeon- they usually advise against operating on this largly self-limiting condition! You will probably be left with a small soft lump ( like Popeye!) where the portion of the biceps muscle attached to the ruptured tendon has bunched up. Good luck. Retired ‘Orthopod ‘now concentrating on biking!
Comment by John Challis — April 27, 2009 @ 2:59 pm
Thanks for that, John.
I suspect the tear is actually at the other end of the muscle – I recognise the “bump” you refer to, but it’s at the elbow end of the bicep, and now the swelling is down there’s a visible dip in the middle of the bicep.
I’m actually going to see the doc tomorrow, with a view to getting a referral to a specialist. At the moment, it seems to be getting worse rather than better – I had problems doing a hill start today in the people carrier because of my lack of pull on the handbrake.
I’ll update the blog as soon as I know anything more.
Comment by survivalskills — April 27, 2009 @ 3:32 pm