Carl describes his old workout routine as aggressive. He went to the gym every day, and part of his fitness repertoire was Olympic-style weight lifting. It kept him in excellent shape, but this daily grind eventually caught up with him.

“I started feeling sore in my shoulder, and then my knee started bothering me,” Carl says. He made an appointment to see Laith M. Jazrawi, MD, at NYU Langone’s Sports Medicine Center, and discovered that he had a lateral tear in his shoulder, as well as a torn meniscus. Dr. Jazrawi recommended physical therapy for his shoulder, but surgery to repair his torn meniscus.

While Carl recovered from knee surgery, he continued physical therapy on his shoulder. When there was no improvement in Carl’s shoulder after several months, Dr. Jazrawi advised Carl that he could live with tolerable pain or have surgery to repair the lateral tear. “I decided to go with the surgery, and had a surprisingly quick recovery. The pain is gone now,” Carl says.

It has been six months since Carl’s shoulder surgery. Although he’s not back to his former aggressive workout routine, he doesn’t really miss it. “I wouldn’t be able to work out at all if I hadn’t had these surgeries,” Carl says. “I’m able to have a really healthy workout lifestyle, and I don’t have anxiety or stress about my physical limitations anymore.”

“I felt like I had a real team that knew what they were doing, were very compassionate, and really understood what I was going through.”—Carl, Age 37