I really enjoy being on the water and competing, but the break we have in the Progressive Bassmaster Elite Series schedule is allowing me time to rest, and hopefully recover, from a weird health issue I’ve had since the end of April.
It all started when a ruptured cyst on my side got infected. I was prescribed two rounds of a fluoroquinolone antibiotic known as Ciprofloxacin (aka “Cipro”). I ended up having a rare reaction/side effect called tendinopathy in my shoulders.
It’s a painful condition that attacks the tendons and causes chronic pain and declining functionality. Tendinophathy is not debilitating, at least not for me, but you can’t put a load on any of your tendons. It really reduces your strength, almost like a really bad Charley horse in my shoulders and my upper arms.
My symptoms started right before I went to Lake Murray on our South Carolina run. I just started feeling really sore, so I worked out really hard, thinking I could get rid of that soreness, or stretch it out.
Unfortunately, that made it worse because I didn’t need to be lifting like that. I guess I was lucky, because the way Tendinophathy affects your body, it can cause you to rupture a tendon.
This condition was really hard on me during the Elite at the Pasquotank River because making those big runs through Albemarle Sound was very painful. I took a bunch of anti-inflammatories, but while that can ease the pain, it doesn’t cure it.
I have a couple doctor friends in different places, and we’re trying to find the best long-term treatment. Most recently, I was down in Tuscaloosa to see Dr. Tidwell at Complete Health and Wellness where they did an Extracorporeal Blood Oxygenation and Ozonation (EBOO) treatment. Basically, they put an IV in both of your arms and transfer blood from one arm to the other. While the blood is outside your body, it’s ozonated and irradiated with ultraviolet frequencies and filtered.
I’ll have at least one more of these treatments, and we’ll see if that helps. Meanwhile, my orthopedist, Dr. Ketchum at Andrews Sports Medicine in Cullman, Ala., is looking at MRI results to determine if anything else is going on, because it hasn’t improved much yet.
We’re praying the good Lord will help us find a course that will get this out of my system before we start up again in August. I’m looking forward to fishing Lake Champlain and the St. Lawrence River, but both of them will be pretty challenging if I’m not better.
I think fishing-wise, Champlain will be the most physically challenging, because it’s a non-forward-facing sonar event. I’ll definitely enjoy getting back to fishing that lake the way I used to, but if I’m fishing shallow, that means a lot of pitching and flipping and jerking. That is more demanding than fishing with a spinning rod like I will at the St. Lawrence River.
I’ve had some of the roughest rides of my life on Lake Champlain, but since we’re going out of Clayton, N.Y., for the St. Lawerence River tournament, Lake Ontario definitely will be in play. Both of these fisheries can end up requiring hard boat rides, so hopefully by then, we’ll have something figured out.
In the short term, I’m looking forward to attending ICAST in Orlando. I’ll be there representing my sponsors Daiwa, Livingston Lures, Lowrance, Power-Pole, T-H Marine, Yamaha and Yamamoto.
I always enjoy interacting with people from all over the fishing industry and seeing all the new items. Hopefully, I’ll have some good news on my shoulder situation soon, but until then, I’ll keep praying.
