You heard about it...

And after thinking about it, I thought what the hell, I'll share the pic of my shoulder. The wrapper came off but that appearently isn't a bad thing, the doc said it was cool as long as the steri-strips stayed on.... So I took a pic!

In this picture you can see the front of my shoulder where I had the nasty scar before that was reopened once again and two spots on my upper shoulder that were scoped, what you don't see is the rear scope spot.

Yes, it hurts.. not as bad now, 9 days later, but earlier this week.. its hard to describe but here goes. At its low points it was either numb and heavy feeling to a dull ache like a railroad spike was driven into the area. Bad times.. imagine the feeling of an iced up Bowie knife being driven into the humorus then recieving a few sharp raps on the end of the handle. I'm mostly past that stuff now.. hopefully Monday means I get the immobilizer off and I can start therapy moving my arm and learning how to do more than flick belly button lint and type with my right hand again.

Colin's first dive back at Alhambra:

Newbie Gulf Diver: "Hey Bud, what happened to your shoulder?"

Colin: "Oh, the Mako's get a little too curious off this beach at times..."

"Lalalala.........<O>

LOL BD! I can pull that one off...

YaOuch!!!!! Looks pretty damn painful! I'd show you my new post-op scar but something tells me I probably should refrain



Hey, did you get the nerve block? That thing is AMAZING (except for the needle in your neck of course)

Had the nerve block.. I was sooo happy they did that, it was done when they did #3 rebuild to. Rebuild 1&2 they hadn't started using that and I was on a synthetic morphine for 3 days while I got past the initial trauma. Something that shocked me this time is that I was turned out same day for an open fix while in the previous 3 I was mandatory 24hours in the hospital for antibiotics via IV. That didn't happen this time, it was go home and start antibiotics in the morning (keflex) and off we went!

Tell ya what though, though the pain for a few days was well beyond words, I can tell that much less was done this time than was experienced in the past - the recovery to a near painless part also seems to be less time covered. If anything I have to admit that this has to be the easiest surgery I've had to recover from.

For anyone unfamiliar with my injury, I have no cartilige in the armpit area of my right shoulder joint due to a wrestling injury in HS. This is what causes the trauma to my rotator cuff that periodically will need maintenance to repair damage or remove spurs on the clavicle due to the float damage that occured when the rotator cuff was literally destroyed. The rotator cuff was able to be repaired completely, but there is no way to replace the missing cartilige to keep the humorous from slipping down out of the socket. Thats the long and short of it.

Here is a good write up of the type of injury I have:

http://orthopedics.about.com/cs/generalshoulder/a/bankart.htm

Morphine.. good stuff! During the "motorcycle accident stay" at the hospital, I was on a 6 minute manual drip. I trained myself to twitch my thumb every 60 seconds so I could sleep. Occasionally when I get a sharp pain ANYWHERE, my thumb will start twitching. Oddly enough, so does my trigger finger, oh wait, that's because of the sadistic NURSE I had! What was her name? Hitler? Satan? Mmmm, it'll come back to me in my nightmares.
I found something with human psychology that is fun. When giving someone an explanation of WHAT HAPPENED, first tell them something ridiculous and laugh, then say, something and keep a STRAIGHT FACE!!! No matter how extreme the second one is, they will believe it if you keep a good composure. For instance, when I brke my foot at work and was in a cast/splint for a few weeks...
Checking out at Publix, asked by cashier what happened to my leg...
DSW: Cordless bungee jumping, they forgot to tie the cord to the bridge before I leapt off.
Cashier and bagboy: HA HA HA, No, what really happened?
DSW: Parachute didn't open. Fortunately, I hit soft ground and bounced like a racquetball. All I got was the broken leg. They say if I had jumped from 15,000 feet instead of 10,000, I never would have survived. I'm sorry, how much do I write the check for again?
Cashier and bagboy look at each other in amazement.
DSW: The total? How much do I write the check for?
She recalled the total and I left saying have a nice day.
They probably to this day still wonder.

I used bdranniks line up above since some folks around here know I have this affinity to shoot fish in the head in 60' of water..

"I was hit by a shark while I was spear fishing a few weeks ago.. yeah, remember when I told ya I was going out? Yup, I had a stringer of snapper goin and WHAM! outa nowhere, right in the shoulder! One bite and shake then left! I still climbed up on the boat with gear and stringer though..."

The look on peoples faces! Wooooooooooooooo... if I had a hat-cam I'd have some excellent shock faces to show!!

Dude, are you going to need to get your tatoo redone??
I'm going for 2nd surgery in January; another 2 - 3 weeks of no diving and 6 more weeks of therapy afterwards. If I'm lucky (and I've completed DM) I'll be cleared to dive for my IDC.