The irony of the story I am about to relate here is not lost on me, so, unlike the top of my humerus, I guess my sense of humor is intact. Mostly, anyway.

It was just last month that I proudly announced that I had become an athlete. You can read that story here. A lot can change in an instant.

I have not posted since my instant, which was Sunday afternoon, February 20, when I was happily playing Pickleball with Bob and a few of our friends. Bob and I were becoming regular Pickleball hosts. Several times we invited friends to learn to play and then we would enjoy some time practicing with them. February 20 put an end to that. I sustained a career ending injury. It was a very short career!

I don’t remember exactly how it all went down. All I know is that I went down. Hard! I was going for a shot close to the net and the next thing I knew I was on the ground and my shoulder was not where it was supposed to be. The pain was immediate and excruciating. Yet, the moment was kind of surreal. I looked at my right shoulder and I remember thinking – there are no shoulder pads in this shirt. I looked from my left shoulder to my right shoulder and back again and it didn’t make sense to me.

Bob and our friends immediately knew that I was hurt. It was difficult to get up because my right arm was useless. And the pain, the pain was off the charts. Somehow we managed to get me to the car and to the ER. I will spare you the details, but after five long hours they finally gave me conscious sedation, and a team of four people lined up the break in the top of my humerus and reset my dislocated shoulder.

They gave me that good news, which was even better news because there was a good chance I was going to have to have surgery. Because they could line things up well, that was not necessary. They sent me home with my arm in a sling and orders not to move it.

That was almost 6 weeks ago. My arm is still in a sling and I am still not supposed to move it. I take the sling off twice a day and do little circles for five minutes to make sure that I don’t get frozen shoulder. The pain is a weird thing. Because there was so much bruising and swelling, pain was showing up in places that surprised me. Why would I have more pain in my upper arm and then I had in my shoulder? They tell me that’s normal. It has to do with swelling. Swell!

As you can imagine, life at our house looks different than it did six weeks ago. I am right handed, so normal tasks are no longer normal. Probably because of the swelling and the tendons and nerves that were stretched, I can’t really write. I also cannot use the keyboard unless I do everything left-handed. I am thankful for voice activated typing!

Bob has been amazing. He has taken over cooking, laundry, washing my hair, opening bottles, putting my hair in a ponytail, and many other things that I will not mention here. I am very thankful that he is retired because if it weren’t for that, I would be in my pajamas all day long with half a ponytail in. Plus, I am not allowed to drive yet. And because I still have pain, I don’t really want to drive.

But, I saw the doctor last week and I am healing. Praise God! The healing is a slow process though. I still am not allowed to use my right arm. I start physical therapy on Monday. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to that! OK, to be honest, I’m looking forward to the results of the physical therapy and not the actual therapy. I will probably have 8 to 12 weeks of PT. Oh boy!

So that is the sad and rather long explanation of why I have not been blogging lately and why I probably will not be for the next couple weeks. Doing everything with my nondominant arm is tedious and slow. I also did not realize how tiring it is on your body when it is healing. I have a new empathy for people who break bones!

Thank you for hanging in there with me. I appreciate you and hope to be back to blogging regularly in a few weeks.