Lately, the whole US is ranting and screaming one way or another about Obama’s plan for universal health care. Last I checked, LBJ and Reagan were the ones who socialized health care in the United States, and no one goes around bashing them for that, or even talks about Reagan’s socialist policies.

I could make all kinds of rants about health care, like the ones available at 10^34 other places on the internet, but I don’t want to go through all that. Instead, I want to show this video i found of some guy, because this is the true face of health care in the United States of America. This is what the greatest country in the world has chosen to to offer its citizens up to now. Keep in mind, this guy could have been sitting next to you at the movies:

If a picture is worth a thousand words, than a video is worth 1000*[frame rate (frames/s)*video playtime (s)] words. This passes for health care in the US. Beer and some paper towels.

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I walked into the hospital in my karate gi, and sauntered up to the first receptionist I could see and said in a controlled monotone:

“Hello. I have dislocated my shoulder. I would like to have it set.”

She pointed the way to triage, where I repeated the above scene. The receptionist there asked a few questions and lead me into the back. On the way there I ran in to Fred’s wife, Cheryl.

“Hey Coons! I didn’t know you were in town! What are you doing here?” asked Cheryl.

“Getting repairs,” I told her.

I was brought to one of the side rooms in the ER and laid on the bed, where I spent the next few two hours awkwardly shifting around trying to make myself comfortable, but couldn’t, largely due to the swelling and muscle spasms and whatnot.

It was at this time that the endorphins wore off.

“Hello,” said the doctor who had come to see me.

“I dislocated my shoulder!” I shouted through clenched teeth. “I need you to put it back!”

“Ok. My name is Dr. Anderson,” he tells me. “This will all be over shortly…”

“Alright! Let’s do this!” I told him, as I chomped down on my wallet, so I wouldn’t bite through my tongue. Dr. Anderson stared at me blankly.

“Oooookay… we just need to get some x-rays, and then we can get started.”

Dr. Anderson leaves, and the phlebotomist comes in, stating that he needs to give me a saline drip.

Fun fact: phlebotomists don’t always go to school. In some places, it’s all done as on-the-job training. As in, they just take interested parties off the street and show them where your blood vessels are, and let them slide metal pipes into them.

This is one of the reasons why I’ve never been real big on getting stabbed. I prefer to be the one doing the stabbing, as most people have it coming.

“Do I really need this?” I asked the stabber.

“Yeah, it makes it easier to administer IV drugs,” he tells me.

“Proceed,” I told him. I normally abstain from IV drugs, but at the moment, I was open to try new things.

So I allowed myself to be willingly stabbed and hooked up to tubes and furniture, leaving me with no usable arms. While this was going on, Joe was giving my personal information to one of the clerks who needed it to fill out all the paperwork needed to treat me. I spent most of the stabbing time shouting corrections at Joe. Mostly little things that Joe might not have learned in our eleven years of friendship, like I really do have drug allergies; and that Barbie is my sister, and not my mom.

Shortly thereafter, Cheryl came back and started preparing a syringe.

“What’s that?” I ask.

She told me what it was, but I was not familiar with that.

“It’s ten times stronger than opium,” Cheryl tells me.

“So… its heroin,” I tell her.

“It’s not heroin!” snaps Cheryl.

“Are there supposed to be bubbles in that syringe?” I ask.

“What? There are so many better ways I can use my nurse powers to kill you,” said Cheryl, as she filled my arm with bubbly opium. “You watch too many movies.”

So I sat there for a while with gritted teeth, waiting for the opiates to work their magic.

“Is there anything I can do Coons? Anything I can get you?” asked Joe.

“Yeah, take some pictures of this for the website,” I told him. “This should make for a few epic posts. I shall call it the Shoulder Saga!”

Joe’s camera was in the car, but he had his camera phone. The results were horrifying.

FIG. 1. Coons' left shoulder, a slightly-destroyed by still functioning human shoulder.

FIG. 2. Coons' dislocated shoulder. The bump is the the skin draped over the acromion and clavicle, since the humerous is somewhere else entirely.

Afterwards, Joe and I lounge about the room. Our conversation was mostly shop talk, about our respective grad programs. I start explain my research to him, and right when I started to get to the good part, is when the rumbling started. It was the x-ray tech, and she’s a story all her own…

FIG. 3. "Cheer up, Coons!"

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This is Chapter III of the Shoulder Saga. Please read Chapter IV.

About three hours into our training, Mr. Capella was having us work on harai goshi. I was going pretty well. I was a judo player when I was studying at Oxford*, and harai goshi was one of my signature moves. I was kind of leery when people were practicing on me, because four years and nine days earlier, I had dislocated my left shoulder in a harai goshi accident.

I was practicing with August for a while, then I went to work with Joe for a bit. He was throwing me, but it wasn’t harai goshi. He was having problems with working the swinging leg into the equation, as Joe throws are typically of the “pick them up and drop them” variety. They work, but tits not compatible with the sweeping part, which makes harai goshi a faster and more brutal throw.

In order to help Joe get the feel of rolling the opponent over the hip,  Mr. Capella was showing him how to do seoi otoshi, which is basically the standard body drop (tai otoshi) executed from a front stance rather than a side-facing stance.

Seoi otoshi is a good move to have.  Seoi nage, the standard judo throw, can be easily countered if your opponent places the palm his hand on your hip when you comes in to throw him. This way, you never get close enough to have good leverage, and your opponent retains his balance, making him impossible to throw. If this counter is used you on,  the setup for seoi nage can quickly be changed to a seoi otoshi setup, allowing you to counter the counter.

Rather than pulling me straight forward, Joe pulled at an angle, so rather than fall forward, I fell at and angle. On my way down, my arm hit his knee.

I laid face down on the mat motionless.

“Ahhhh,” I said lackadaisically. I didn’t feel a thing, but I knew something was wrong. My arm was numb and paralyzed. I couldn’t feel my arm, but if I could have felt my arm,  it would’ve hurt.

That’s when my day got weird.

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This is Chapter I of the Shoulder Saga. Please read Chapter II.