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From Woman's Day

On Tuesday, Todays Al Roker announced he would be undergoing total shoulder replacement surgery. The NBC weatherman said hes been living with intense pain in his right shoulder due to arthritis, a general term for a range of conditions that cause swelling, pain, and stiffness in or around a joint.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 in 4 Americans have arthritis, and its typically treated with medication or surgery to repair the joint or manage symptoms.

The arthritis in Al's right shoulder has caused pain and affected his range of motion, particularly his ability to move his shoulder up and down. Its not bad during the day, but at night its an intense pain that literally wakes me up. For the last month, Ive only been sleeping about two or three hours a night, which even for me is a little bit less, Al said on the 3rd hour of Today. Its gotten to the point where I cant even sleep at night.

Al, who said his moms side of the family suffers from really intense arthritis, has osteoarthritis, the most common form of the condition. Osteoarthritis occurs when the protective cartilage that cushions the bones begins to wear down over time, causing pain and joint damage.

The surgery will be Al's second shoulder surgery in six years, after he had his rotator cuff repaired in his left shoulder in 2014. The procedure also marks Rokers second procedure in less than a year, as the Today host had hip replacement surgery in September 2019. The deal is that Im going to have replaced everything by 2027, Al joked.

Al's doctor, Riley Williams III, M.D., an orthopedic surgeon at the Hospital for Special Surgery, told Today that the surgery is designed to restore the normal joint services so that arthritic, achy pain that hes been having and waking him up at night can go away, and we can kind of get him back on a road to recovery.

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What you can expect after having a shoulder replacement is 25-plus years of really good function, provided you do all the requisite things after surgery [like] getting good healing, good nutrition and physical therapy to re-strengthen the muscles around the shoulder, Williams added. It really, really is life-changing and can bring you back to a point where you dont even realize that you had the shoulder operated on in the first place.

Al will not host Today this week as he recovers, and he will likely be in a sling for the next three weeks. He will also undergo physical therapy in the days after his procedure.

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Al Roker Will Have Total Shoulder Replacement Surgery Due to Intense Arthritis Pain - Yahoo Lifestyle

This entry was posted on August 17, 2020 at 1:52 pm and is filed under Arthritis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |