Are you kidding me?

I finally made it in to see PZ Pierce, the god of sports medicine for my knee pain. I also had the doctor write me a referral for my shoulder since it still hasn't stopped bugging me since my bike crash with that damn curb in April.

Guess I'll give you the good news first. PZ thinks that after two visits to the chiropractor, I'll be running pain free. I hope he's right because I haven't been able to do that since July!

Now onto the bad news. I have a torn labrum in my shoulder. Here's a little description for you:
The shoulder joint is a ball and socket joint, similar to the hip; however, the socket of the shoulder joint is extremely shallow, and thus inherently unstable. This means that the bones of the shoulder are not held in place adequately, and therefore extra support is needed.

To compensate for the shallow socket, the shoulder joint has a cuff of cartilage called a labrum that forms a cup for the end of the arm bone (humerus) to move within. The labrum circles the shallow shoulder socket (the glenoid) to make the socket deeper. This cuff of cartilage makes the shoulder joint much more stable, and allows for a very wide range of movements (in fact, the range of movements your shoulder can make far exceeds any other joint in the body).

The labrum is made of a thick tissue that is susceptible to injury with trauma to the shoulder joint. When a patient sustains a shoulder injury, it is possible that the patient has a labral tear. That's me! Here's a pic.

The cure? Well, he gave me some exercizes I can do to help it. He also said I shouldn't do anything that causes it to hurt. That means no more yoga for me. Luckily I can swim pain free. He said I can make it through the next racing season just fine, but after that, I have to schedule surgery.

Several new techniques allow surgeons to place “anchors” into the bone (yes, into the freaking bone!!!) around the shoulder joint and reattach the labrum using the arthroscope. There are many variations of these anchors, but most are drilled into the bone and have sutures (stitches) attached that are then used to tie the labrum down to the bone and enable the labrum to heal back in the appropriate position.

This kind of makes me want to laugh and vomit at the same time. I laugh because the thought of me having to have a surgery related to a sports injury is hysterical to me. You have to remember I have never played any sports aside from volleyball in junior high! The only surgery I have ever had was when I had my wisdom teeth removed and it was the worst experience of my life thus far. It makes me want to vomit because my pain tolerance is negative 10 so this is going to be interesting. The recover is 3 to 4 months. Awesome. Enough said.

I think the worst part about all of this is that it is all happening because I'm a complete idiot and can't ride my bike into a parking lot without hitting a curb! Unbelievable!! Seriously, am I 28 or 82? Sometimes I wonder...