Let me tell you a dislocated shoulder hurts! I wish I had a good story to go along with the dislocation but I don’t. It is actually embarrassing, I sneezed. Yup, you read right. I am recovering from shoulder surgery and I sneezed, thereby dislocating my shoulder Friday afternoon. Obviously things like always happen late on a Friday or just before a long weekend. Why, because that is Murphy’s Law.
I decided to get some sleep and see how it felt in the morning. In the morning the pain was the same and I had a nice egg on the top of my shoulder. So what am I to do, my shoulder hurts a lot, constant pain, not the comes and goes variety. If I go to the Emergency Room at the local hospital, I am probably going to wait a minimum of 18 hours, and that is if my arms was mostly severed and there was excessive bleeding. With a dislocated shoulder I couldn’t imagine the wait. I had a choice, I could:
- reset it myself,
- wait in pain until Monday or
- take my chances of at the ER and possible contract something worse during the gruelling wait.
Obviously I chose option 1 since I know a little about how my body goes together. …I wedged myself in a wing back chair, had my wife pull the arm out while I bent and twisted it back into position. She was not a willing participant but she knew I would find a way to do it myself. I then iced the shoulder repeatedly through out the day. By Sunday morning the swelling was greatly reduced and the constant pain was gone. By Monday morning the swelling and 80% of the pain was gone. I headed to PT. After looking at me like I was insane (for not going to the ER) they performed some further minor adjustments; during one of my exercises I experienced a sever, sharp sudden pain, which quickly dissipated. I left PT sore but feeling better. While the dislocation seems to have temporarily pushed back my recovery a week or so things are looking up!
However, when possible go to the Emergency Room.