Friday, October 16, 2009

The Intriging Things We Don't Know About Ourselves

I discovered something new about myself today. Where to start, where to start?

I fell down Thursday morning as the kids and I headed out to the car. I hurt like the dickens - wrenched my ankle, scraped my knee, and ended up with a good goose-egg on my arm. This morning I was doing okay, except for my arm. There was no problem where I'd hit it, but rather up around the shoulder.

I've had problems with this area before. The first time I remember really hurting it was my senior year in high school. Believe it or not, when I say I have an old badmitton injury, I'm not kidding! Badmitton was one of the games in a semester's Lifetime Activities class. My teammate Mimi and I were having a good old time batting the birdie back and forth at each other when something so very painful happened: I reached up and back in preparation to do a bit of whacking when something moved in my shoulder, causing intense pain to move down my arm. I couldn't move it for several minutes, and even then it was only done with great pain. Needless to say I didn't finish playing that day.

Yet neither did I really tell anyone what had happened. The pain eventually left, as did the numbness, leaving me with the pesky problem of feeling like something was continually pressing against the muscles - from the inside - whenever I moved my arm the wrong way. I began to hold my arm in place with my other hand, as this didn't stop for about two weeks. Though I can't be sure what did it, everything eventually moved back into place and the pain went away.

Since that time I occasionally have a hard time with the same arm. I took a weightlifting class once, but couldn't do certain machines as it would cause great pain. Even in the last year I've found myself having problems with this arm once again. My fall the other morning really hurt things again. I had a doctor's appt this morning and had him take a look. He ended up giving me some strength training maneuvers to help things out.

Here's where the intriging part comes in to play. I spoke with my mom earlier and began telling her about this when she interrupted me to tell me when I was very little my right arm used to pop out of the socket all the time! In fact, she got pretty good at figuring out how to twist things just right to get it to pop back in to place. I had no idea!

So (muffle) years later I find out my badmitton injury had NOT in fact been the first time I'd really hurt that arm. Who knew my old bones had been struggling for years to stay in place?

Cuh-razy.

3 comments:

Josie and Wayne said...

You can't tell me you just barely learned that about yourself. I swear I remember you telling me once that when you were a kid your arm would pop out like that. Really. I think you've told me that before. Anyone else remember? Maybe I'm thinking of someone else, but when I started reading your post, I thought, "she's going to tell about how her arm used to pop out as a kid." Weird. Maybe I"m psychic.

LaurieW said...

I can too tell you I just barely learned this!!! That's so wierd you thought I'd talked about it before. The only memory I recall sharing with you all was when I almost drowned but my pigtails saved me!

I think you ARE psychic :0

Josie and Wayne said...

Ok, so I don't recall the pigtail story. It sounds interesting, so you should share that one again sometime. But I do recall someone (and I really thought it was you) telling about how when they were a kid they would be holding their moms hand and the kid would just turn and start going the other way while the mom was holding the hand and the shoulder would just pop out of joint. At first the mom frieked out, but then the mom got good at putting it back in. So, I guess if it wasn't you that told me about that, I can't think of who it might have been. I hope I figure it out, cause this will drive me crazy if I don't. Oh, and sorry about my first post. I didn't mean to call you a liar or anything, I'm just gonna go crazy now with my wierd false memory trying to figure out who I knew that their shoulder popped out as a kid.