Well, it’s 95% likely there will be no tri for me in October. I’m home from the ortho (who is a triathlete and sports medicine specialist) and have learned that the arthrosis in my shoulder is, in his words, “pretty severe”. In fact, he said that if I were a professional athlete, he would schedule me for immediate surgery. Since I’m not, he is putting in a request for physical therapy instead.

He did clear me to bike and run again, but to listen to my body and back off of those if my shoulder starts bothering me. I’m not to attempt any swimming until after at least a couple of sessions of the PT, and even then I can only do the breast stroke. I’ve been told absolutely NO crawl, backstroke, or fly for now. He said there is a slim chance that I might be able to do the breast stroke without pain and, if so, I could use that to still go ahead and do the tri. The only problem with that scenario is 1) since I have to wait until after I’ve started PT, I can’t get back in the pool until probably 4 weeks out from the tri which doesn’t leave much time for swim training, and 2) I don’t know how to breast stroke. *sigh*

He said in all likelihood, I won’t be able to do the tri in October, but said he absolutely could get me in a position to do one next year if I’m interested. He did say that if I were interested in continuing in the sport long-term that I would probably want to consider having the surgery. He intimated that it’s something I’ll mostly likely have to do eventually anyway, but understood that I probably wasn’t interested in having another major surgery right now since I just had the spinal fusion 16 months ago.

So, that’s where things stand for now.