I've been nursing a finger injury for about a month now, very similar to the one described in the thread "Injury Advice for Tightness in Hand and Forearm" and I'm getting restless sitting on my couch taking it easy. With that said I was wondering a couple of things about the MP community.

First, how many of you have been injured? How many injuries? What kind of injury? Did you self medicate/self physical therapy, or did you see a doctor/specialist? Did the injury require surgery? How many surgeries have you had? How long did it take for a given injury to heal?

Second, after the recovery how has your climbing been? Did you improve? Did you have to adapt different techniques? Have you re-injure the same body part?

Within my first 6 months of climbing I dislocated my right shoulder 3 times. It was due to a previous shoulder strain that loosened my ligaments enough to make it unstable. I was very naive. I had just gotten into climbing and was hooked, I didn't want to slow down. I ended up having surgery on the said shoulder, a bankart repair, I had torn 50% of my labrum off. It took me 8 months until I was on the rock again. I was stronger than before and learned how to rely much more on good footing. I noticed that my left shoulder would be sore versus my right, which I believe was the result of some overcompensation.

Now here I am, good shoulders, feeling good, redpointing my best, onsighting my best, getting some really proud (for me) boulder problem sends, and POP. My left hand ring finger blows. The ortho DR I saw said I'm fine, no rips/tears/ruptures, just a pretty good strain. I'm resting and taking it easy, but I'm bored and restless.

Let me hear your stories of encouragement and overcoming your injuries.

Last April I was the strongest I had ever been. I fell bouldering and destroyed my radial head (the end of your radius where it comes into the elbow.) They lopped it off and replaced it with a prosthetic, it sort of looks like a small metal plunger. Basically a partial joint replacement. That day I set a goal; to climb 5.13 again by my 30th birthday, just about a year from the date of the original injury.

The first six weeks after the surgery were pretty rugged. I was not gaining any motion through physical therapy. It was really frustrating and the more it wouldn't move, the more I would very painfully push it.....like 5 hours a day. A little piece of hell. After six weeks I found out I had developed a very complicated issue called hetertropic ossification (H.O.). Essentially my body was calcifying scar tissue, locking my elbow out. There is not much information about H.O. and I got a lot of shoulder shrugs from surgeons. I finally got into contact with one of the top three elbow surgeons in the country, at the Mayo Clinic, one of the best hospitals in the world. Point in hand, my elbow was a mess.

I was seriously doubting whether or not I would ever climb again. Damn. Anyway, my surgeon was a straight up bad ass. He did an awesome job and I also found some incredible climbers/physical therapists here in Portland. Awesome people.

I had the second surgery in July (2 major elbow surgeries over the course of three months.) Seven months and a ton of hard work later, last weekend I started working on "darkness at noon", a .13a at Smith Rock. It should go by my birthday (April 4).

The ossification and the prosthetic. Between the surgeries. Submitted By: Matt Sedor on Feb 15, 2013