Dislocated Shoulder

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:

1. reset it myself,
2. wait in pain until Monday or
3. 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.

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