SUL being forced upon me

In 1977-1983, a “backpacker” named George Meegan hiked 19,000 miles from Alaska down to Argentina and used a rolling cart for his gear.

It’s something anyone with a injury or surgery should consider.

This pic from—

Hey Eric, have a read of this:

Non operative treatment of rotator cuff tears

It’s a surgeon’s journal, by the way.

“The physical therapy program, derived from a systematic review of the literature, was found to be effective in more than 80% of patients with follow-up of 2 years or longer.15 The most important predictor of failed nonoperative treatment was patient expectations: For a patient who thought physical therapy would work, it worked; for a patient who thought it would not work, surgery was the more likely choice. No measure of pain or RCT severity predicted the need for surgery.16 For 2 randomized trials that compared surgery and physical therapy, the success of nonoperative treatment was similar: 76% (Moosmayer and colleagues17) and 92% (Kukkonen and colleagues18).”

Given the quality of the feedback and input to Eric’s original question, should BPL have a separate thread on hiking post-injury recovery?  Jennifer and others, have provided great input and I’m concerned that it will be lost in this forum/thread…as it has little or nothing to do with SUL backpacking.  Thoughts?

Neither: I posted not for sympathy or as a clever ploy to get more gear past The Boss. I really like the UL gear I have but think I’ll have to go much lighter – at least for a while.

I have one constraint that keeps me in a frame pack and that is the need to transfer 90% of the weight to my hips to avoid aggrivating L-4 and L-5 disc problems. My Osprey EXOS 58 has the comfort I need compared to a few framed Cuben packs I’ve tried so the few extra ounces are very tolerable.

But now, at my digital scale I have begun  a very strict winnowing of gear.

Ex. >My Platypus 2 L. hydration bladder & tubing is actually 3 oz. lighter than my Camelback 2 L. setup.     >My TD Sidewinder stove W/ Brian Green ESBIT tab holder is the lightest fuel/stove combo I have.         >Using Katadyn chlorine dioxide purifier tablets is inconvenient but lighter than my Steripen Adventurer. >As listed above using just the fly of my TT Moment DW is my best shelter option.

I already own “200 lbs. of lightweight gear” so I’m trying to Not buy more gear but lighten up with what I have.

“Breaking News”: My orthopedic surgeon just tore up his right shoulder while water skiing and cannot operate for at least 3 months. This is my opportunity to try a few months of PT. I’ll post here later on results before ay surgery.

“Breaking News”: My orthopedic surgeon just tore up his right shoulder while water skiing and cannot operate for at least 3 months. This is my opportunity to try a few months of PT. I’ll post here later on results before ay surgery.

Is that Shoulder-injury-inception?

OK, I’ve delayed this shoulder surgery until I have thyroid surgery to remove a benign tumor on my left thyroid. That happens in early June.

So backpacking this summer is in. Hunting in fall is in.  But skiing may be out until late January if I get shoulder surgery in late October, after hunting season. I guess sports gets in the way of surgery here.

Nick & Kevin, yeah, my one post here about a Go Fund Me was a bit tongue-in-cheek but I was seriously looking for advice, not sympathy. After all the serious medical stuff I’ve seen people here on this site go through a shoulder surgery, while painful, is really minor.

UPDATE: The shoulder surgery is postponed until spring of 2017. This is because I had my left thyroid removed two weeks ago. The tumor on it was, thankfully, not cancerous so my right thyroid remains in place.

I’m postponing the shoulder surgery because I absolutely hate the aftereffects of general anesthesia. Once a year is more than enough. So my backpacking won’t suffer this year.  One trip will be a short backpack into Nevada’s Jarbidge Wilderness to set up my base camp for deer and elk hunting. I’ll carry around 45 lbs., including scoped rifle, just over 1.5 miles so it will be tolerable. There will be daily hiking of at least 5 miles for hunting. Then, hopefully, packing out the meat to the coolers in my car.