That, uh, shoulder injury from last Sunday’s snowboarding excursion? It has me a bit perplexed. I’ve suffered a number of other injuries over the course of my 39 years here on planet earth, and they usually work like this:
- Injury-causing event occurs.
- Injury hurts. A lot.
- I cry like a little girl.
- I whine and complain and carry on like it’s the end of the world.
- Pain continues for several days (or, if I really goofed, weeks).
- My whining and complaining raises to new heights the bar for how unnecessarily dramatic and annoying a mildly injured person can be.
- Pain begins to subside, gradually, day by day.
- Whining and complaining subside at a slightly slower rate than the actual healing process, just to be sure.
- I’m well again … until I do something else stupid.
When the shoulder thing happened, I remember hearing and feeling the “pop” in my shoulder joint, and thinking to myself, “Oh dear me. Why, that sounded and felt not good at all. So much so, in fact, that I’m fairly certain I shall be in a great deal of pain and discomfort for some time to come.”
Imagine my relief and surprise, then, when, for the remainder of that day, and all of the following day, my shoulder was sore, and certain movements caused me a relatively mild amount of pain and discomfort, but I was in no way experiencing the kind of debilitating trauma I had anticipated—much to the relief of everyone around me, who would have otherwise been subjected to the previously described crying, whining and complaining.
And then …
The pain and discomfort began to get increasingly worse with each passing day, reaching a crescendo during the wee hours of this morning, when, after apparently sleeping on the shoulder in question, so special became the pain that it awakened me, and kept me mostly awake from that point forward.
Dipping back into my archive of physical injuries, I am able to find only one item that might make for a useful point of reference for this new shoulder injury, and that is the time that I rolled my ankle so badly that I destroyed that particular joint to the point that the medical professional who conducted the x-ray exam (for which I had no insurance at the time, as I was 22, several months out of the Army, working as a bartender, and golly gee, was that good timing for my Worst Injury Ever) said I would have been much better off if I had fractured it instead of causing all the ligament and tendon and muscle damage. The pain I experienced during that looooong recovery was pretty intense, and I’m guessing that this shoulder injury is a similar thing, albeit not as severe.
Which is why, even though my mother is reading this right now and yelling at the monitor for me to go to the doctor, I’m going to wait it out some more.
10 Comments
It sounds very familiar… Is your injured shoulder lower than your non-injured shoulder? If so, I vote for separated shoulder. You need to immobilize with a splint for, oh, three to six weeks.
If not, then I vote for rotator cuff injury. Needs rehab, which you can do at home.
Email me if you want! Hope you feel better soon!
How is your range of motion with that shoulder? Can you lift your arm up without pain? You might want to take Ali’s suggestion until you figure it out, lol
Ali & Lee: Thanks, guys. It’s actually feeling much better today. Hopefully, it’ll continue to improve.
Jaime: Thanks for the compliment. I’ll try and steer clear of your husband.
I enjoyed your post about fertility on Dooce. But your blog is even better. You and my husband must never meet lest you both feed off one another and end up dead.
I’ll be back to visit.
Ciao.
You sound so much like my husband. He won’t go to the doctor unless:
1) his intestines are hanging out of his nose.
2) it has anything to do with his penis.
Glad to hear you are feeling better!
Good to hear that you are feeling better today. I haven’t had any experience with shoulder injuries…so I can’t advise or diagnose.
I am new here…and am off to explore your greatest hits!!
That’s exactly what age will do to you. It’s almost as if the nerve cells leading to our brains have slowed down > so by the time your body realizes that you are hurt, SEVERAL days have lapsed. It’s good that at least you are lucid enough to remember what happened. I suspect one day it will happen when we’ll wake up and wonder, “What the heck happened to me? Why does it hurt to move?? I haven’t done anything in … honey? HONEY?! What year is it??”
Does it make bone-scraping, grinding, crunching noises when you move your shoulder?
I think I did the same thing in a pool exercise class.
I haven’t been to the doctor either.
Hope yours gets better soon.
I told you – you need to take better care!
America’s Next Top Mommy: Ah, yes, the intestines-hanging-out-of-the-nose and penis-only criteria. Makes sense.
Kelly: Welcome! Hope you enjoy.
Jen @ amazingtrips: Yeah, that sounds about right. Scary, ain’t it?
Little Miss Sunshine State: Fortunately, no, no bone-scraping, grinding, crunching noises. That might actually be cause for a visit to the doc.
Belle Bamford: You did indeed. One of these days, I’m gonna listen to you.