Occupational hazard

Football throughout the weekend. I haven't been going for the Sunday game for the last 4-5 weeks, and today I dragged myself to the ground. I was dead tired after yesterday's game, but I played and scored 2 goals too :-)

A nasty fall caused a dislocated shoulder for one of the guys. He tripped over the ball and landed heavily on his left shoulder. We knew it didn't look good when he didn't get up for 30 seconds. When everyone gathered about him, he was moaning in pain and that's when we knew for sure it wasn't good. One look at his shoulder joint and I thought that he'd dislocated it, but I'm no expert so I kept quiet. He couldn't bend his elbow nor could he lift his arm. He was just doubled over holding his left hand with his right. One of the guys got his car into the ground and we took him to the hospital. He was doubled up throughout the ride.

Arriving at the hospital, we wheeled him into the casualty ward on a wheelchair. The intern immediately ordered an X-ray, and he was put on a stretcher for a ride to the X-ray room. He couldn't get into a good position for the X-ray, and screamed in pain when the orderlies stretched his arm. We (4 of us) went outside and waited. A huge intern was attending to him, and he came out 15 minutes later confirming the dislocation. He had hooked the shoulder into place, and would now apply bandages all over the affected part. He showed us 2 bizarre X-rays taken before and after he'd fixed the shoulder. The one taken before the fix showed the bone along his arm completely detached from the shoulder socket! There was a 2-inch gap between them!

The strapping up took almost 40 minutes as they had to completely shave his chest. Then they cut up his T-shirt as that was the only way to get it off without bending his arm! There was no plaster, just bandages strapped right across his chest and supported by a sling. The intern who fixed his shoulder was beaming with pride when the resident doc came in. It looked like this was the first time he'd done this operation! The doc advised 3 weeks complete rest.

As we wheeled him back to the car, the guy joked that he would leave football and start playing billiards with one hand! I said he'd be back playing in 3-4 weeks - this was merely an occupational hazard.