The Hug of Doom

Last Monday I bent down to hug my daughter good night. She's been doing this thing, lately, where she grabs onto me and won't let go until I pry her off (it's good to be the king). This time I felt...something in my shoulder. Not a pop, not a pull. Just something. I figured she'd somehow tweaked my rotator cuff injury a bit, which would have been a shame because it had just become pain-free.

The next morning I was a bit sore. By the afternoon I had to leave work a little early because it had gotten really sore. For the next few days I left work a little early so I could rest my very sore shoulder. Shifting my 5-speed car was not fun. I had to take three Ibuprofen an hour before bedtime to lessen the pain so I could get more than three hours of sleep a night. By the time the weekend rolls around, I decided to totally rest my shoulder so I laid in bed and watched the first season of "Kung Fu" and did very little else.

Things are a little better, but still not great, by Sunday night. Better enough to move my shoulder around a little so I could stretch it a tiny bit. That's when I felt a little pop and knew right away that that made my shoulder feel better. Suddenly I could move my shoulder a bit more, though it was still sore. Near as I can tell, my daughter dislocated my shoulder by grabbing me in a certain way on that Monday night. Not so unreasonable when you consider that I had previously dislocated that same shoulder back in college, so it would be prone to such things (that time in college was also a slight dislocation that hurt a lot).

Needless to say, training for this Sunday's triathlon has been right out since the injury. No swimming, running, or cycling. It turns out you use your shoulder in nearly every kind of movement and if I was going to make it to the triathlon, I had to rest that shoulder. Now that things are looking up, though, I need to get the cobwebs out. First up is an easy loop around Griffith Park on the bike tomorrow. Thursday will see me do my first 2-mile lunchtime run (more on that in another post). Friday, if at all possible, will be an extremely easy day in the pool so I can see what my range of motion is and figure out how to swim if it's still limited.

I've asked my daughter to go easy on me in the future.