Sunday Newscape Magazine

I’m in a bad mood. On the mood scale, with One being “singing Disney birds” and Ten being “if I see even one more magazine about Brangelina in the grocery store checkout line, I’m gonna slash my wrists with the subscription card,” I’d say I’m at a solid Eleven.

The reason? I need shoulder surgery. According to my doctor, I have a torn interior labral cartilagesomethingorother, which in Layman’s Terms means my right shoulder’s got a tear in it the size of Rhode Island.

“Gosh Rob,” you say. “That labralcartilageanteriorthingamabob of yours sounds painful!”

IT IS. Almost too painful to put into words. Fortunately however, I’m a writer, which means I’m well trained for situations just like this. And thanks to this training—an extensive regimen that involves frequent gulps of beer and even more frequent pee breaks—I’ve succeeded in accurately describing this pain through the use of several words,

a) all of which have four letters
b) none of which should be used in the presence of small children, librarians, or your elementary school principal.

Fortunately for my neighbors, I only have to use, and by “use” I mean “shout at the top of my lungs,” these words when I’m exerting myself through strenuous activities like putting on deodorant or trying to sleep.

I discovered my injury the same way that most people in excruciating pain do: I reached out to destroy the alarm clock (and believe me, if you had heard how loud this thing was, you would’ve done the same thing) when, out of nowhere, I had the following profound thought:

“OWWWW!!!! HOLY [one of the aforementioned words]!!! THIS HURTS LIKE [same word]!!! ARGHHH, MY [different word] [and another] [word that could very well be illegal in 14 states] SHOULDER!!!!”

Using my powers of deductive reasoning, I deductively reasoned that my shoulder was merely sore from my having gone to the gym the previous day and the pain would go away soon enough. Two days later however, my shoulder still hurt like hell. It had also turned the color of a radish. So naturally I did what anybody suffering from a swollen, painful radish shoulder would do: I went back to the gym. Oh wait. Did I say ‘anybody’? I meant ‘anybody with the reasoning skills of a cucumber.’

So I went back to the gym, laid down on the bench, and lifted the barbell triumphantly in the air…for about two seconds, at which point the thread connecting my arm to my shoulder did this creepy ‘plotting evil’ type of laugh (“I’ve got you now, fool!”) before springing into action. Quite simply, it snapped like a twig. [NOTE: For a full transcript of my reaction, see paragraph seven]

And that’s when I took the first step to recovery: admitting I had a problem. Hey, that’s a big deal for me. After all, I’m a man which means I’m not allowed to admit to feeling pain, unless of course it’s socially acceptable pain, such as watching [insert favorite team here] lose or something truly tragic, like having to throw away a favorite pair of underwear after many decades of loyal service.

But like I said, the pain in my shoulder was unbearable and my newfound way of coping, icing it with a pack of frozen peas, did nothing but leave me smelling like the frozen food section of the grocery store. Now I’m usually opposed to going to the doctor, mainly because someone’s almost always gone ahead and circled the missing objects in that month’s issue of Highlights, but again, this was a necessity.

The doctor led me through a variety of diagnostic tests in which he folded my arm like a pretzel while asking questions like “Does this hurt?” and “Hmmm…how ‘bout this?” Needless to say, I did so well on this test that the doctor recommended I have an MRI or what’s commonly referred to in the medical community as “We’re just gonna roll you into this long tube where you won’t be able to move your arms and legs and you might feel just a teensy bit claustrophobic because the top of the tube will be pressed right against your nose, but don’t worry because the whole thing will be over in about 60 minutes, oh, and did we mention that the entire time you're lying there, you'll hear an excruciatingly loud banging noise that’ll have you convinced a jackhammer is being drilled directly into your skull.”

A few days later, I met with a surgeon (a man with less personality than a pack of frozen peas) and was given the bad news: I need surgery. The surgeon explained his plan for reattaching my thingamabob to my whatchamacallit, but to tell you the truth, I wasn’t really listening. I just kept thinking about how, ironically, I was in much better shape before I joined a gym.

The moral of the story? Exercise is evil and I’m done with it. From now on, I’m just going to lounge on the couch, watch TV, eat pizza, and drink beer. Assuming I can lift the remote without cursing.

© 2006 robbloom.com