bone spurs - I can't stand it anymore

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Up until July 2010 I was a hardcore weightlifter. I was benching 400+ lbs at 200 lbs body weight. My other lifts were good too. I started getting pain in the left shoulder and by late August sought medical attention. At first the Orthopedic Surgeon (from here on OS) and I thought it was trigger points, but the massages I got from PT didn't help that much. Since then I have had multiple tests and procedures and here is where I am:

A cervical MRI showed an apparent c7-t1 disc herniation. Subjectively I have very minimal pain in that area. It does not hurt to cough or move my neck through a full range of motion. Two cortisone injections had no effect whatsoever.

I have a large bone spur on the scapula just below the glenoid outside of the shoulder joint. I feel it catching on what I believe is the teres major muscle. I also believe it is compressing the axillary nerve and causing mild neurological symptoms down the arm, but those symptoms could be coming from the herniated disc. The catching can be very painful at times. I also have a constant dull ache on the teres major.

I had a shoulder MRI arthrogram which showed a labral tear and some supraspinatus tendinitis. I decided to get scoped on 12/22. The good news was that the labral tear did not involve the biceps anchor, so could just be debrided rather than repaired. I had some bone spurs removed from the acromion, which was also smoothed over. There was a very minor partial thickness supraspinatus tear, which was also debrided. Recovery is going well, but I still have the problems mentioned above.

The OS, who is a great technical surgeon, but rather poor diagnostician, still thinks this large scapular bone spur is not causing symptoms, despite my vivid descriptions of what it is doing. He thinks the disc is causing the teres major pain, even though two cortisone injections for the disc did nothing to relieve it, and despite the obvious catching. I am seeing another doctor on January 11th, but because of a winter course I had already signed up for, the earliest I would be able to have it removed would be mid-February.

I need an A in this course, and I am obsessing over this bone spur which is causing my constant pain and an indefinite halt on my weightlifting. To make things worse, even though I haven't lifted in four and a half months, I think I am growing another one under the right shoulder in the same place. It makes me think lifting didn't cause these spurs. However, lifting with them would certainly put me at high risk of serious injury.

So basically, I need to get through this course without having my Asperger's fueled obsession hurt my grade, and I am probably looking at two surgeries before I can lift again. Weight lifting and the perceived maximal exertion, along with the endorphin release was the only thing keeping depression and paralyzing obsessions at bay. Now I feel like I am going crazy. I am looking for short-term coping mechanisms for the course, and any suggestions on the bone spurs. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

The whole point of exercise is to improve your condition, not to damage muscles and tendons. If you start to damage things, you've passed a limit and you need to back things down below your damage threshold. Some bone irregularities that develop may go away on their own if you discontinue exercise for a few months and then restart at a lower activity level. I started getting sore nodes on the bones of my fingers because I was using the hand grip too much. The nodes went away when I stopped for a few months and soon I will restart, but I won't do as much of this exercise as I did before.

The disk is probably hereditary. c7-t1 is VERY hard to herniate normally and I have never had a traumatic neck injury.

The bone spurs, as I described, have gotten worse since I stopped lifting. I suspect another cause, and would like to find it before undergoing anything invasive. Can this be genetic as well? I want to know how to prevent a recurrence after surgery.

Only minor damage was found during the arthroscopic shoulder surgery, although I probably will have to back off the weights a bit - especially when I first start lifting again, as the risk of injuring unconditioned muscles is high, and scar tissue is never as good as healthy tendon tissue. I still don't understand the anterior labrum tear. Pressing motions should stress the posterior and superior labrum. I have never heard of an anterior labral tear from heavy pulling motions. The partial thickness (only about 10%) supraspinatus tear certainly came from lifting, but a hooked (type 3) acromion predisposed me to that. I read that there is a 90+% chance the right acromion is hooked as well (when one is hooked, the other usually is). Looks like another surgery down the road.

This really sucks - my genetic dispositions around (and maybe below) the shoulder joint and neck are about as bad as they could be. I just hope my health insurance (Oxford) doesn't start denying claims. Good thing I live in NJ (strictest health insurance regulation in the country). Right now I feel like I'll never be able to lift again. It disgusts me seeing those big muscles just wither away. At least I caught the shoulder pathology before anything serious happened.

You actually had an experience where bone spurs shrank and disappeared on their own? Where were the spurs? What do you think caused them? How big were they?

I don't know for sure that it was a bone spur. It was a dull lump maybe the size of a pea in diameter and a few millimeters thick about 2-3 cm from the hand-finger joint on the middle finger of my left hand. It's still there, but it's smaller now and not as sore since I quit the hand grip exercise about 2 months ago.

I had another one on one of my other fingers and it went away on its own.

yours sounds like a ganglion cyst. They do grow and shrink with time and activity modification

Since you seem to want to be exercising, would it feel good to take up running? You'd be working yourself, and it's not precisely what you want but it would have similar effects on your brain. You could feel less awful about not being able to lift weights if you were still moving your body, maybe. It'll release endorphins the same way, so for a stopgap measure it seems ideal.

And you could channel your obsession re: bone spurs into productive research to see if there's anything you can do.

Ouch! I hope you feel better!

I was using bike riding as a stop-gap measure for the lifting. My left shoulder is still sore from the surgery (2 weeks ago) and the OS says I can't ride on roads for another month (not that I could anyway with the snow and ice on the roads in NJ right now). Riding a stationary bike is worse than nothing because it means I have to be somewhere where others are lifting. Running would probably be OK physically - I just hate the activity. I may try it until I could ride again (probably not until March given the weather here. There is almost always black ice on the road in the winter.)