Golf with a broken arm?!?!?! Don't be silly!

I have to start with an apology... I am way overdue on my blog. Life kinda took over. As well as the operation, which is the subject of this article, I've also started a new job and been on a couple of holidays...

I went under the knife on March 20th at Blackheath Hospital. What exactly did I have done? Well, the official term is an ulna shortening osteotomy. If you are a regular reader of my blog, you'll know that this wasn't my first rodeo - see this post for details of the first op (which I now know was unsuccessful).

Ulna Shortening Osteotomy

Basically, what they did was take a saw to my ulna bone – that's the big one in your forearm – and took a little slice out to make it shorter, before screwing in a titanium plate to hold it all together. The idea behind this is to create a bit more wiggle room in my wrist, which hopefully means less of the old aches and pains. The orthopaedic surgeon who performed the procedure, seemed pretty confident. He even threw around the figure of "80% better". Of course, my preference would be a complete recovery, but I seem to have done too much damage for that to be a realistic prospect. How you quantify 80% better, I have absolutely no clue, but I'll take it! It's certainly more reassuring than the last attempt, which felt a bit like a shot in the dark.

The post-op X-ray

So, what's life been like since the big day? Well, despite rocking a chunky cast on my left arm, I'm not letting it slow me down... much. For the first couple of days, I was in a fair bit of pain. Even the thought of a gentle imaginary swing on Tuesday was enough to make me think, "Nope!". Right now, I’ve effectively got a broken arm, and the last thing I wanted to do was mess things up while the bones are trying to knit themselves back together. There’s a plate in there holding things together, which is good to know, but I’m not about to test its limits just yet.

But don't you worry, the competitive spirit is still flickering! I've already been out on the course. For now, I'm playing 100% one-handed, including putting, but even so, I entered my first competition as a one-hander.

I have to admit, it didn't go brilliantly. (That's a bit of an understatement). On the green, I just couldn't get the ball in the hole, sometimes even from 12 inches. The rest of the game was largely as it has been for the last few months: a few moments of comparative brilliance interspersed between tops, shanks and duffs. At that point, I was still playing off my old handicap of 3 and only I mustered a grand total of 1 stableford point... surely some sort of record!

Maybe another golfer would be embarassed by this but I was just happy to be on the course. I have played again since then and the results were a bit different, but I'll save that for the next article. As a trailer for the next one, I've now got a relatively appropriate handicap, I've had a birdie and I smashed my personal best. I'll try to get the next article out a bit more promptly!

So, has anyone else out there been through something similar? Maybe an unexpected detour in your sporting life due to injury? How did you cope with the recovery? Any tips or tricks for staying sane while sidelined? I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences in the comments below. Let's keep the conversation going!