Hi,
my name is Mike, I'm 52 and injured my shoulder about 5 years ago when a piece of hardware broke while ascending the mast on our sailboat (in a bosuns chair). Luckily I was only about 20 ft. up when it broke or I'd probably not be writing this. I landed on my right shoulder and was diagnosed with a Type III separation (no MRI was done at that time). With a few months of PT my shoulder seemed to be getting better and was mostly functional until last summer - my ortho says it took that long for the shoulder muscles to atrophy and show the SLAP symptoms and joint damage (there is clavicle impingement from the separation). With my SLAP surgery looming within a few weeks I found this site like everyone else. Luckily I was able to postpone my surgery from this June to after the 1st of the year because my maintenance routine seems to be working for now, but now I keep up on the site to learn and provide support whenever I can.

Good Luck,

Maxi

Hi Mike,
My name is Jennifer and I am 37. I ended up with a SLAP tear this past December while cross country skiing. I know that sounds funny but I was going down a decent hill on the cross country route that we often take. I ended up going a little fast at the bottom of the hill and fell face first. I was a tangled mess. I didn't even know that I hurt my shoulder until the next day when I couldn't raise it past 45 degrees. I had SLAP repair with subacromial decompression on 2/27/08. I am pretty much fully healed and am back at work and doing all of my normal activities. I rarely have any discomfort. Can't say that I have experienced any pain in a couple of weeks. I am done with PT. The only thing I really still need to work on is the strength in the affected arm. Good luck with the surgery.
JMcWil

This thread reminds me how I started this whole journey, mainly because I saw my name in the first post Hope everyone is healing up!

Hi. My name is Mike, a 20 year old college student who just had a SLAP Tear repair. I initially separated/dislocated my shoulder in high school football 4 years ago. I wrestled and played lacrosse and just had little tweaks to that shoulder throughout. It would pop or ache sometimes. Then at the beginning of the summer, I was lifting weights when I felt the pops and pain. That was the start of this saga for me.

i'm 47,kickboxing and martial arts hobbyist. don't know how i earned my slap tear but suspect military press. didn't have much pain with injury but had weakness in affected arm. am now 3 days post and spent only 24 hours on prescription meds -- taking otc motrin just in case. can't wait to get back to karate!