Surgery

So the day after tomorrow is the big day! I get my shoulder fixed! I suppose I should fill you in on why this happening.

In high school I was an avid volleyball player, I LOVED it! One day at practice I dove for a ball and felt one of the things no athlete ever wants to feel. The ball of my shoulder was ripped out of the socket. I had landed at a weird angle and twisted my arm around. I almost blacked out from the pain. When I stood up it slid back into the socket, again NOT a pleasant feeling. I went and told my coach what had happened. We got some ice on it and I sat out for the rest of practice.

Luckily that day I had an appointment with my chiropractor who was also a licensed physical therapist. He examined me and said I was going to be in some serious pain the next day. I didn't feel much at the time because I was warm from practice but I had strained muscles in my chest, back, neck, and side because of the force it took to pull my shoulder out. I was in very good shape at the time so my muscles should supported my shoulder. But I had twisted my arm with such force that it popped out anyway.

A few years later I was swimming and not even thinking about made a similar twisting motion with arm to try and get something off the bottom of the pool. There went my shoulder again. I came back up and my arm was just floating on the water and I couldn't move it. I flipped out. I started to get out of the pool and when the water was no longer supporting my arm it went back into place. I remember the grinding feeling and the crunching sound it made. To this day that still gives me the creeps.

Fast forward about 9 years. I was always very careful with my shoulder. I obviously didn't want a repeat. Unfortunately I woke up one night and I was laying on my side with my arm above my head. This wasn't real comfortable so I started to roll over and it felt like someone was trying to rip my arm off. I'm not sure if it actually dislocated again or not (I take sleeping pills so I wasn't real with it mentally speaking) but I do know that I hurt it bad. This pain was worse than the first two times combined. This happened on a Friday night and it hurt all through the weekend but I was still able to function. On Monday I got into one of the family doctors and my primary care physician's clinic.

This doctor was of no help at all. I told him my entire history with this shoulder and he pretty much blew me off. Apparently he thought that since I had never had to go to the ER to have it popped back in that I couldn't have dislocated it. He kept talking about pinched tendons, but the ones he was talking about are on the front of the shoulder and I was having pain in the back. I was NOT happy when I left that clinic so when I got home I looked up orthopedic surgeons on my insurance company's website and called one of them.

I got lucky and got a very down to earth doctor! He listened to me, asked me lots of questions, and gave me a good exam. The exam showed that my left shoulder was significantly weaker than the right. He could also tell that the joint was "sloppy", the ball of my shoulder just kind of slid around and wasn't really held into place normally. He told me that he wanted to get an MRI (he was shocked that no one had ever ordered an MRI on me before) and that he expected that my cartilidge was torn.

A couple weeks later I had my MRI and then met with the doctor again. Sure enough, torn cartilidge. So there it is, the story of my bum shoulder. I can't wait to get this over with, it hurts pretty much all the time and just reaching for the phone at work it feels like its going to pop out again.