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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!"

I could wiggle my fingertips now, and my shoulder hurt. Pain is your friend; he lets you know that you are still alive. I’d been through worse, but that didn’t mean that this didn’t really, really suck.

“It’s not your collarbone,” said Mr. Capela.

“Good,” I replied. “A guy I work with broke his collarbone the same way, it’s been nothing but trouble for him. “

Mr. Capela  continued to feel around, and assess the situation. He had no medical training, however he is an expert at breaking and mangling people, so he could draw upon his vast experience with broken and mangled people to diagnose exactly what was wrong with me.

“I…I think Joe’s knee his the nerve, and gave me a stinger or something, my arm’s kind of numb,” I told them and I sat up.

“Look at his shoulder. Now look at his other one,” Mr. Mullins said with a smile. “That’s horrifying.”

Mr. Mullins chuckled and with a grin and a friendly upward nod told me: “Your shoulder’s dislocated. Go to a hospital.”

I stand up, gritting my teeth in pain, last time this happened it fixed itself, I had no luck this time. Mr. Zielinski tried to comfort mt pain, in vain.

“At least it will go in easier this time,” said Mr. Zielinski.

“No it wont,” I told him. “I dislocated the other one.”

He stopped in horror and a general lack of words.

“At least they match now,” I told Mr. Zielinski. since there was no point in complaining about what cannot be undone. Seeing no point in morning, I find humor in the situation.

I sauntered over to my gym bag, where beneth my hat, regular clothes,  my pair of sai, my nunchaku, a kubotan, a wooden tanto, my mouth piece, my knee brace, a pair of tonfa, a pair of kama, a jutte, my notebook, the Chinese ring daggers, belated Xmas presents for some of the other black belts in my school, the comics August returned to me, a roll of athletic tape and my emergency underpants, I was able to retrieve my glasses case and to pluck my wallet from my shorts.

“Is there anything we can help you with?” asked Mr. Capela.

“Yeah, can you put my shoes on? That’s kind of a… two-handed job…”

Mr. Capela put my shoes on my feet for me, which really says a lot about the guy he is.  Me? I just sat back and let the initial endorphin burst to finally sink in and do its work.

“How is he getting to the hospital?” asked Joe.

“You broke him, you take him,” said Mr. Mullins.

Joe lugged my gym bag to his car, while I slowly shuffled over, with my limp arm fluttering in the breeze the the handlebar streamers of a little girl’s bike. After running a few red lights and never-ending series of painful bumps in the road (because it was Erie), I make it to the hospital.

“It’s okay Coons, you’ll be fine…” Joe tells me as he drops me off in front of the emergency room. “…unless you get that one nurse I made out with a bunch of times, then never called back for no reason, and she remembers you. Then you’re screwed.”

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 you 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.

Sometimes after karate class, we end the day with a brutally refreshing medicine ball routine. Naturally, we have to leave the little kids out. Noah, who was maybe six or seven. was naturally was disappointed.

“Why can’t I do the medicine balls?” he asked.

“Because,” I explained. “The medicine balls are a significant fraction of your body weight.”

“In fact,” added Joe. “We could probably use you as a medicine ball.”

Immediately, I picked up Noah, lifted him to chest level, and threw him to Joe, about ten feet away. Mind you, Noah’s mom was about twelve feet away, watching us chest pass her son back and forth for about a minute.

It’s really great for the upper body, and Noah laughed maniacally for the rest of the night, for as far as I can tell.

Next class, the first thing Noah says when he sees me was: “Can you throw me around  again?”

“What?” I ask. “Like the medicine balls?”

“Yeah.”

I was silent for a second. There’s only one thing that a responsible adult can say in this situation. I stared him down, and in a clear, stern tone, told him:

“Yes, but only if you’re good.”

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