Well, I scheduled my surgery for April 4 which is just after a couple things I wanted to get out of the way before getting into the sling like a long road trip we had planned and finish up my volleyball league.  The doctor tells me I will likely be out of volleyball for about 4-6 months, so I guess I'm going to miss summer volleyball this year.  But, I'm excited to at some point in the next year or so to be able to hit the ball without major pain.

About 5 years ago my doctor basically told me that unless I'm on the pro circuit playing volleyball, I shouldn't take the risk of doing surgery.  He actually didn't do any tests or anything except moved my arm around a little bit.  So, he just said to do at home therapy to strengthen the joint and then live with it.  That worked for a while since I was moving around the country and only playing vball sporatically and recovering from an ancle injury.  But I decided that now that I'm playing regularly and want to continue for many years as a way of maintaining my weight, "just live with it" is no longer acceptable. 

I was looking through everyone's stories on the forums and found that most people could pinpoint a date of injury.  But I honestly can't even pinpoint a year that the injury ocurred.  The best I can recall is that I started feeling some pain when serving and hitting the volleyball hard some time in college about 10 years ago.  I played competitively all through high school and then regularly for several years in college.  But for the past 10 or so years I've been off and on playing once a week with various community leagues. 

 At one point about 5 years ago I saw a doctor and did some PT with little to no improvement.  I even took a year off playing volleyball after a pretty bad tear in some ligaments in my ankle.  When I went back, my shoulder felt great until I went up for my first hit after taking a break and imediately re-injured it as if I didn't take any time off.  It basically feels like my arm is going to fall off for about 15 minutes after swinging overhead to hit the ball.  But after a day or so of rest, it's back to feeling like nothing happened unless I tweak it in a certain overhead motion. 

So, I finally decided to do something about it.  I figure, I'm only 33 years old and the only physical activity I enjoy is playing volleyball.  I should be able to play until I'm 60 something if my shoulder doesn't get in the way.  So, I'm willing to invest a year of recovery for 30 more years of playing.