coyotecreekranch.com Family Blog

Archive for April, 2011

Hi this is Barry. I’m sitting on the couch typing this one-handed, a bit loopy from Percocet, because sometimes at least, Mick was right. 😉

As some of may have heard from Beth, I sustained a serious arm injury a few weeks ago, while doing something simple and commonplace. Our new big screen TV had an early failure on one of its boards, and I was at home with the TV repairman watching him fix the set. Once he was done, I picked up one end of the stand to swing it back into place closer to the wall. As it got near its final position, there wasn’t enough room to hold it with both arms, so I switched to holding it with just my right arm. Mistake. When I did that, I felt brief but intense pain, and heard a “pop” that was loud enough for the TV repair guy to hear it, too.

As I found out later, that pop was the sound of my bicep tendon detaching from my forearm bone. I had surgery yesterday to re-attach it. My surgeon said the surgery went really well, with a good, clean attachment. It should heal up good as new if I let it heal properly, which I fully intend to do.

I had never heard of this type of injury, and would not have really thought it was possible. You’d think the bicep would complain way before you reached the rupture point of the tendon. I found out that this typically happens to men 40-60 years old, usually when lifting something heavy. My surgeon, who says he repairs these all the time, says I’m a “textbook case”. I was swinging one end of a 215 lb. piece of furniture, which I guess is heavy enough to do some damage.

Beth took this picture last night, a few hours after surgery and still feeling pretty out of it:

This video is a good overview of the injury; I thought it described what I felt to a “T”: