I dislocated my shoulder at work today. Second time I've dislocated the right one now, so its possible that I'll have to have surgery on it, because now that I have stretched out all the ligaments TWICE now, less than 2 years apart, they will probably never tighten up right. It popped out far to easily today (I was putting a box that weighed maybe 5lbs on the top shelf in the storage room at work, and standing on a ladder trying to hold the box when it popped out.) So next time it will pop out even easier. not fun. I made it down off the ladder without getting hurt anymore, and went into the office where one of my coworkers was, and yelled to her to get the supervisor. By that point the initial adrenaline rush had worn off and I literally dropped to me knees and was holding me elbow about to cry when Kim came down. Luckily she is a PA (physicians assistant) and just waiting on certification and paperwork to go through so she can start working in a hospital, so it was really reassuring to have her there to help me. She took a quick look at it, and said I should go to the ER, and then got me ice and advil and helped me find a somewhat comfortable position to sit in while I waited for my Dad, who was able to come immediately to pick me up at work and take me to the hospital. Turned out the position I kind of fell into was the best way I could be sitting to support the arm and everything.
Holy S*** the pain was bad. By the time we got to the lobby and went through triage, my entire arm was throbbing and going numb, and I was practically shaking from the pain. I was trying really hard to stay relaxed and breath, but it was really hard. Luckily they got me in pretty quick, and gave me some awesome pain killers through an IV. I literally sighed and said "Oh, thank god" when they started to kick in. Origionally they wanted me to take my shirt off and change into the gown BEFORE the pain meds, but I kinda panicked and said that sitting still hurt too much to even think about taking my shirt of at that point, so they agreed to let me have the drugs first. It was definitely odd to be high on pain meds while hanging out with my dad, but he just kind of laughed at me. He also helped me take my shirt off, since I couldn't move my right arm at all, and didn't say anything about my binder. No idea if he even realized what it was, but it was still cool.
Last time I dislocated my shoulder, it had locked it self back in on the wrong side of the socket, up against my ribcage, so they completely sedated me to pop it back in, and I'm guessing did some pretty intense yanking on my arm. So I got a little nervous when I realized I was going to be fully consious (or at least as much as you can be while on dillotted) and kept flinching because I was expecting it to hurt WAAAY worse than it actually did. He just slowly pulled my arm out, and then lifted it untill it popped back in.
I have to wear a sling for at least a couple days, depending on how it feels, possibly longer. and all my new found motivation to go to the gym is now on hold. I have to make a follow up appointment to see an orthopedic surgeon in the next couple weeks, so we'll see how soon I'll have to have surgery, cause I'm pretty sure they will want to go in and tighten the ligaments. After todays pain, I'm really ok with them making sure it doesn't happen again.
The real fun part this week will be meeting with HR, and all the injury report and workmans comp paperwork.
