The Shoulder Diagnosis

After last Friday's graceful dismount from the boat dock at my parent's lake house, I stayed in the water for several minutes trying to figure out how badly I had hurt myself.  In an attempt to test the range of motion on my left arm, I tried moving it slowly, backward and then forward.  I immediately felt such excruciating pain that I thought I was going to pass out.

Afterward, I remarked to Emily and Luke that it had been a long time since I had cried due to physical pain, but the pain I had just experienced moving my arm after the fall was about the closest I had gotten in a couple of decades.

I had an MRI on Wednesday afternoon, and the doctor called with the results yesterday.  Emily took the phone call and explained the results to me and my mom when she got off the phone.

EMILY:  It's not good, babe.  Apparently, when your shoulder hit the edge of the dock, it dislocated and broke off between 1/3 and 1/2 of your shoulder socket.

MURRAY:  Ugh.

EMILY:  You are definitely going to have to have surgery and probably some type of bone graft.

MURRAY:  Insert Expletive Here

EMILY:  He also said he can tell by looking at the ligaments that they are stretched, and it was dislocated but it's not anymore.  So somehow, you dislocated your shoulder and managed to "relocate" it.

MURRAY:  Really?

EMILY:  Yes.

MURRAY:  It must have been in the water when I tried to move my arms.

EMILY:  Yeah . . . why are you smiling?

MURRAY:  I re-located my own shoulder?!  That's like some serious Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon stuff.  That's freaking awesome.

EMILY:  Sigh.



Because it was just like that.

Except for the part where I almost cried.