After turning on the wrong burner and starting a small fire in the staff room, then taking my students swimming in the school van and leaving the lights on resulting in a dead battery and everyone being late to get home, I thought surely I just need to go home and relax… maybe take a hot bath. But I never got the chance.
Instead I left work, picked up my daughter at daycare, got home and as I was holding her on my lap trying to get her boots & coat off, she slipped and was falling head first towards the floor. In a desperate reach to catch her, I flung my arm out to the side, and I don’t know how but my shoulder came right out of its socket. Somehow I managed to catch my little girl with my other hand and cried out in agony realizing immediately that I had dislocated my shoulder and wasn’t going to be able get it back in.
I needed help but I was home alone with a 2 year old. My husband was riding his bike home and couldn’t hear his cel phone. My neighbors’ driveways were vacant indicating that they were all still at work. I felt myself becoming hot and faint… started to go into shock. The pain was like nothing I’d experienced.
Aware that I needed to find someone nearby who could take me to the hospital, I decided to venture out knowing I couldn’t take Maya with me and she was safest at home. I opened to front door walked down the front steps and thankfully saw our friend Dave who lives across the street driving up to his house. He immediately saw that I needed help and we decided to take Maya with us to the hospital. As we were getting into the car, I saw another friend drive up to her house and thought she would able to take care of Maya. I walked (in retrospect not the best decision I’ve ever made) around the corner to my friend Kim’s house… meanwhile Dave was with Maya. The woman who lives next door, Kathy, was driving up the road, saw me, stopped her car in the middle of the street and immediately tried to help me. I guess my dangling arm made the state of things pretty apparent. Anyway, she walked alongside me to Kim’s house, just in case I fell down or passed out. When Kim came to the door, she took one look at me as I somehow managed to explain through my throbbing pain that I had dislocated my shoulder, Dave was taking me to the hospital and could she take care of Maya. Seeing immediately that she had to come and help, she walked out in the rainy street with bare feet, left her front door wide open (leaving her dogs to run out the door unattended) and rushed to get Maya from Dave so we could proceed to the hospital. Could I have better neighbors?
I clambered into Dave’s truck and tried desperately to brace myself for the most horrible car ride of my life. There is no way to stabilize a dislocated shoulder and so every turn, bump, start and stop added to the agony just enough to make me feel like I might faint. I started to become light headed and thought I’d better explain to Dave that I’m pregnant in case I lost consciousness and he needed to tell the doctors in my behalf (it was still a bit early and I wasn’t really telling people yet). He uttered a shocked “congratulations” and I tried to be grateful, but I’m sure my response was anything but appropriate. I kept apologizing, not sure why, but either way, we got the hospital very quickly.
I walked into the emergency room and called to the triage nurse “I’ve dislocated my shoulder, and in case I pass out, I want you to know that I’m 11 weeks pregnant”. She asked me to sit down, and soon after someone came out to take my blood pressure. I don’t know what the numbers were, but they must’ve been low as I was feeling extremely weak and I remember hearing the triage nurse call out “I’m only taking people with chest pains ahead of this girl with the arm”, and I was very quickly ushered into a wheelchair and rolled in to the ER where I soon met with two doctors, a resident and a more senior physician. They discussed how they might “finesse” my arm back into its socket without pain medications. I was encouraged to try to move my arm in the motion they modeled for me to try to set it back in to place… oh the pain! I decided I couldn’t take it and they said they thought it would be safe to give me morphine. I decided I wanted it, badly! They’d have to start an IV and I’d have to wait. I could NOT wait. I decided we should continue to try the drug-free method and finally on the second run, it popped back in. Relief is small word to describe what I felt. The blood started to flow back into my hand, I regained feeling in my fingers and I felt the colour return to my cheeks. Then I started to shiver wildly. The nurses brought me warm blankets and although I was still in a lot of pain, it was nothing compared to the hour before when my shoulder was out.
The aftermath was less exciting, my husband was reached and he headed straight to the hospital. He took me home and we got poor discombobulated Maya from Kim’s where she had had a wonderful time, but was still very happy to come home. I was fitted for a sling and told that it had to be worn for 3 weeks.
I seriously never realized how important a working shoulder joint is. Without the use of my right arm and shoulder, I couldn’t drive, dress myself, and worst of all couldn’t care for my daughter. I was also in the midst of the peak of my nausea and vomiting (it tends to hit me hard during the first trimester). In short, it was a long haul.
Four weeks later, I am finally beginning to see the light. I feel like I can do normal things, like get dressed, wash dishes, play with my daughter, and I’m working on physio exercises to strengthen & tighten those tiny muscles that got stretched out. One of the worst bits of news that I received from medical professionals was that I now have a 50% chance of re-dislocating this shoulder–that’s freakin’ HIGH! And I can’t describe how desperately I never want to go through this experience again.
Even weirder was my family Passover dinner two nights after my injury, where a surprising number of cousins and aunts and uncles all told me they’d each dislocated their shoulders twice. Is this some kind of genetic predisposition? I hope not. My physiotherapist thinks it happened because of the hormone relaxin in my body which causes a woman’s joints to loosen and relax during pregnancy. This is useful for giving birth, but can cause a whole host of other problems.
I was also freaked out that I might have somehow harmed the baby by stressing my body so dramatically. Could the baby have been affected at this early, critical stage of development? Thankfully, my doctor says no, and we soon after found a very strong heartbeat on the doppler machine during my 12 week maternity appointment. So, things are looking up. The nausea is fading and I can finally start to enjoy the fact that I’m pregnant… or rather freak out that I’m going to have TWO children to juggle in a few short months.
Excited, nervous and scared out of my mind!
I am a total clutz! My family has always razzed me about my clumsiness. For instance, on my sister’s wedding day, I was in charge of carrying the wedding rings which I managed to drop on the ground just as my dad was backing his car up and he drove over the rings squishing her husband-to-be’s wedding ring… I could go on. I’m notorious for having the most ridiculous accidents. And, today was yet another example of my accident prone nature:
