It was in the middle of the summer. I had noticed that my right shoulder was hurting. It was a new pain that I have never felt in my shoulder. It was the weakest I have ever felt. Almost as if I had ten shots in my arm that made it weak. I talked to our athletic trainer and she said, “Your shoulder is weak and you might have some tendinitis in your shoulder.” She recommended that I stay out of full contact practices for a few days. I talked to my parents and my mom was concerned that her son had seriously hurt his shoulder since his father had shoulder problems.  My dad was acting as if it was normal and said that a few days of rest will do wonders to help me heal. 

I had to sit out for a few days. 

A week later school had started and we were doing tackling drills after school during practice. I had to tackle Tyler Jacobs who is significantly bigger than me. I have never been afraid of contact or a big person in football; I stayed in line instead of switching out like a teammate wanted me to do. In front of me there are three cigar dummies lying on the ground. I am supposed to backpedal in and out of them and then hit an arm pad that someone was holding. I maneuver around the pads; [punctuation error] reloading my arms and shoot them forward while wrapping him up at the same time. My shoulder turns into jello with how the bone moved so easily out of place. It swung outwards like a swing in one swift motion. My shoulder is in immediate pain. 

I can’t move it. It’s hanging on by a thread I think. 

I slowly walk away in severe pain. One of the coaches check on me and tries to find out what happened to me. “It’s out here!” as I point to my shoulder. The coach has a confused look on his face as if I had a concussion. He was puzzled trying to figure out if I was making any sense. By now I have walked ten yards or so. I screamed out in disgust as I felt my shoulder shift back into place. I grunted “It’s back in place. It just moved into the socket. It feels so weird.” Still the coach that was with me was puzzled. Whistles are still going on in the background as the practice was still on. It had been five minutes since the initial impact and severe shoulder pain. The golf cart with the trainer (Jaclyn) was coming out to see what was wrong with me. 

Jaclyn was puzzled as well. 

Jaclyn asked me a series of questions as of what happened. I explained to her [punctuation error] “My shoulder moved outwards and it felt super strange. After a few minutes I felt it slide back into place so it came back inwards.” She had the most clueless looking face I have ever seen. She did not understand how my shoulder could move like that. Then I had to go through her evaluation. She tested the strength of certain spots in my shoulder. I failed all of those. My shoulder was that weak and immediately she got ice for my shoulder. I also had to wear a sling for the first time in my life once she got the ice wrapped on my shoulder. The sling was too small for me and itched anytime I moved. It was only for five days as my shoulder started to feel better.

I had to sit out for a week after my shoulder injury. 

Surprisingly I’m good to go for the first game of the season. The shoulder is a little sore but I push through it because there is a difference between hurt and injured. We won the first game and I started on offense too. The next two games we lose because most of our good players got moved up to the Junior Varsity team. Practice has been going well for me until Wednesday. Here’s what happened. The same type of drill is going on during practice preparing for Hastings. This time I have to shed the block and tackle Jack Boyd. I get rid of the block and lower my right shoulder into Jack and I fall straight to the ground in pain. The same type of movement occured in my shoulder and it moved outward like last time. As I am laying on the ground my shoulder is staying in the same spot which is not a good sign. My shoulder is out of place for what feels like 20 minutes. Coach Crouch who was with me while my shoulder was out of place decided to help me up. When he pulls me up I immediately feel my shoulder go back into its normal spot. 

The trainer checks out my shoulder again and recommends that I go see a doctor for this since it has happened twice. 

I am now at home after practice. I am speaking to my mom who is at home at this moment. I say “Jaclyn recommends that I go see a specialist or go see a doctor and get X-rays.” She said “ I’ll schedule an appointment with MSU Sports Medicine on Friday since my insurance covers that.” 

It’s Friday. 

I walk into this big building decorated in green and white. It is amazing under any other circumstances since there is potentially something wrong with my shoulder. There are three elevators in the lobby on the way up to the radiologist area. Two of them are modern elevators and do not look like the other elevator. This elevator looks straight up out of a horror movie. It is made out of what looks like steel and a little rust. It is away from the other elevators so it already looks suspicious. My mom is freaked out and says there is no way that she would go into that elevator. Somehow I convince her to go into it. Once we get in it looks even worse; it has old wood on the inside and the technology on the keypad to go up the floors looks like it is from the eighties. I close the doors immediately to scare my mom. I jump in it to test if it is even going to hold us. Bad idea. My shoulder is aching from that. The elevator starts moving though; it creaks every inch when my mom starts to say as if it was waiting for its next victim. Time moved too slow in that elevator ride that I thought we were stuck in it. The doors creaked open and we made it to the fourth floor where the radiologist is. 

We check in with the secretary and they tell us to wait a few minutes for the nurse to call us back. My mom and I are talking about my injury and we both agree that there is probably nothing wrong but a dislocation which is nothing serious. The nurse calls my name and we follow her to the room. She goes through the basic stuff like checking my blood pressure and asking me questions about the injury among other things. We get this pink slip that allows us to go into the radiologist room where I can get the X-rays. 

I am getting the X-rays and I have to wear this weird thing around my waist so that the X-rays work. They tell me to keep my shoulder still in the normal position front and back. That was the easy part and I thought I was done after that. The doctor comes back and tells me that I have to try and reach across my body with my bad shoulder. Impossible. I was able to do that a little bit and the doctor left and got behind his screen again. That seemed to last forever. Finally, I am able to leave and go back to the exam room and wait for the results. 

The results shocked me. 

Before the doctor walked in with the X-rays me and my mom were talking. She said “I think you will be fine since you have most of the movement in your shoulder.” I nodded in agreement with her since I have never been seriously hurt. It was also the same injury as a few weeks ago. The doctor walks in. In my head the intense music is blaring awaiting the results. He puts up the X-rays and my heart sinks. It is clear that I broke something. He said that there is a slight fracture on my humerus and that my scapula was bent inwards 90 degrees. He already assumed that I tore my labrum based on how I broke it with the dislocation that happened. He recommended that surgery should happen soon so that I can make a quick recovery. Surgery was scheduled in three days which is Monday. I was frightened because it was a bad injury and it was the first time I have ever had surgery. My mom is quietly freaking out right next to me when she found out. 

I am not allowed to eat or drink for 12 hours before the surgery. I was super hungry during that time. The stomach ach was also worse because of how nervous I was; in addition to all the anxiety. The building where I had surgery looked like a tiny apartment from the outside. On the inside it looked like an actual hospital which made me feel better about all of it. I get dressed up in my gown that they gave me. I’m all relaxed in the hospital bed just waiting for the surgery to be done. They have to put an IV into my arm. There is one problem though; they can’t find a vein in my arm to insert the needle and inject me with all of the necessary fluids. It took them ten minutes or so, which made me even more nervous. A doctor walks into the room; he asks  “Do you want me to numb your shoulder for the next few days. We block the nerve because some people feel a lot of pain.” I agreed to that. There was one problem though. My parents hid the part that there was a half foot needle stuck into my neck! I didn’t find out about the needle length until they pulled it out. Once they cleaned up the area where the needle was going in they shoved it into my neck. They missed the correct nerve. That lead to my shoulder on the bed uncontrollably twitching up and down. It looked like a dead chicken flopping all over the place. They fixed that after watching me twitch there for a few minutes it seemed. They moved the needle around and hit the right nerve area. 

Finally, it was time for the surgery. I got rolled into the surgery room; the room was freezing cold and there were lights shining on me. They put a tube up my nose and five seconds later I was out. I wake up and find out everything went good and two hours had passed by. They fitted me for this sling once I was able to move. I had to be in this high tech sling for four weeks. After three weeks I would start physical therapy.

The three weeks have passed by. 

I am nervous for my first day of physical therapy. I have to drive all the way up to Grand Ledge for the therapy too because it was the closest place that my moms insurance covered. It took me and my mom and hour to get up there and when we got there, I was already tired. One of the therapists (Pat) took me into an exam room to test out the range of motion in my shoulder while I was still in my sling. It felt really strange to be moving my shoulder around; it had been almost four weeks since I have been able to move my shoulder. 

Physical therapy was the same every week that I have gone. Every once in a while I would get to do more strengthening so I could come back and be able to play basketball. I worked my ass off in my sessions with the therapist so I was able to participate in tryouts. I was able to participate, but I was limited. I could only shoot with my left hand (which is my non dominant hand) and I was not allowed to participate in any drills with contact. Somehow I got pulled up to the Junior Varsity team and I was the team manager for most of the season because I was still not able to participate in contact drills; I was making a lot of improvements I was now able to shoot with my right hand. 

Another week has gone by and I was starting to feel down because I was still not able to play.  When I went in for my session during the middle of the week I heard the greatest news. I was able to start participating and this was my last week of therapy. I didn’t think that would ever happen. The season was halfway over already and I just got cleared to play. When I was able to play it was not much of a difference though. I only played in two games out of the ten that I dressed for. I was very disappointed with myself because I couldn’t help the team win any games. At the same time I was also very proud of myself for my recovery. The surgeon said that there was no way that I would be playing this basketball season and that I would be recovering until spring break. I learned more about myself in those months than I have in my life until that point.