A couple of weeks ago, I dislocated my left shoulder, and am planning to have it surgically repaired a couple of weeks from now. I wasn’t doing anything unusual at the time — was only putting my iPad on my bedside table — but put my arm in a bad position and the shoulder came out. (As a side note, for those of you keeping score at home: Kindle: 0 shoulder injuries. iPad: 1 shoulder injury.) Anyway, it came out, and Kathy was good enough to hold my forearm for me so that I could get my shoulder back in the socket.

This is a bit of a longstanding problem for me. I first dislocated my shoulder when I was 14 years old (give or take) — our soccer team had practice one evening, but another team was using the field, so we were warming up on the asphalt basketball court. I was dribbling around a guy but tripped over his foot, and caught my fall with my left arm, and my shoulder popped out. It took about 90 minutes to get me to the hospital and see a doctor — when I saw one, he lifted my arm above my head, and the shoulder got reseated, much to my relief. In retrospect, I don’t really know how much it hurt, but I know that I was pretty scared because I had never been through anything like that before.

I went through the normal rehab and physical therapy, but had continued problems — my shoulder dislocated maybe a dozen more times up until my freshman year at Stanford. It got to be so that the slightest thing could cause it — even turning over in my sleep did it a couple of times. So I decided to see a surgeon about doing something more to repair it.

In either 1990 or 1991, I had surgery near Dallas — something called a Bankart procedure to repair the tear in my labrum and to retension the capsule. It was an open procedure — not like the arthroscopic procedures that are most common today — and I remember it being tough to recover from, even as a 19 year old. Was in the hospital for 3 or 4 days, then a ton of rehab after that.

But the really, really great news was that my arm didn’t dislocate anymore. I lost some range of motion in the shoulder, basically because they tightened the capsule more than “normal.” But it was definitely worth it to have a more stable shoulder. In 1997 or 1998, though, it happened again during a softball game at Stanford, as I was in the batter’s circle. Surprised me, and hurt a lot.

And then, life was better for a while. I started lifting weights around that time, and generally getting into better shape, and my shoulder got stronger than it had ever been.

Until a couple of weeks ago.

I’ve been in to see Dr. Eakin at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation a couple of times now, and I like him — he was pretty clear from the outset that I would very likely need surgery, and after looking at the x-rays and MRI images, it’s confirmed.

He actually drew me the set of pictures above — the top left shows a top view of the shoulder — you can see the ball connected to the very shallow socket, with the pointy bits of cartilage called the labrum keeping it in, along with the capsule that’s surrounding the ball. When the dislocation happened, as shown in the upper right diagram, it broke part of my labrum and detached the  capsule (or stretched it really thin). The procedure he’s suggesting is called a Bankhart procedure (I think) to repair the labrum and retension the capsule, resulting in the happy picture in the middle of the image. Unlike the procedure I had 20 years ago, this will be an arthroscopic one.

One side note is that part of the ball chipped during some earlier dislocations — resulting in the notch he’s drawn. That doesn’t seem to be causing me any particular issues at the moment.

As a rule, I’m very hesitant to choose surgery — it’s just very difficult to undo if something goes wrong. But since I’ve had such trouble over the years with this shoulder, and since it’s been surgically repaired before, I’m pretty clear that it’s the right thing to do. I think that if I don’t do it, my shoulder will always feel very unstable, and will have a pretty high likelihood of coming out again. I figure I can heal better now than I’ll be able to in the future.

Rehab is longer than I was hoping for — 1 week out of work, then 4-6 weeks in a sling, then 4-6 weeks in physical therapy, then another 4 weeks of strengthening work. So it eats up a lot of the summer, and is a little hard to swallow because I’m feeling pretty good right now, am able to go to the gym, etc. But I should come out of the summer with a more stable shoulder for the long term, so I think it’s the right thing to do.

For the sake of completeness, I’ll note that my right shoulder has dislocated a couple of times, too, but is decidedly more stable, and doesn’t really give me any problems at this point. My brother has dislocated one of his, too.

Anyway, as I’ve said other places, it’s a bummer, but I’m not really too unhappy about this development. I’ve got time to take care of it without hugely disrupting life, and it’s basically a fixable problem, with a minimum of drama. I’ll be able to do some working out while I rehab (like the exercise bike), so that will help, too. And I’d always take shoulder problems over knee issues — don’t have to walk on my shoulders.

Surgery in a couple of weeks — hopefully I’ll be in the 80% happy category on Dr. Eakin’s drawing.

I’ve always liked Lewis’ books — Moneyball, his most recent, was just terrific. This book is about a poor black kid in Memphis who happened to grow up, find an affluent white sponsor, enroll in an almost exclusively white Memphis evangelical Bible school, and play starting left tackle for Ole Miss in his freshman year, and will almost certainly be one of the top 10 draft picks next year for the NFL. Oh, and when he was sixteen, he was 6’5″ and 330 lbs. Yikes.

Anyway, interesting & inspirational story, if a little full of hyperbole here & there. Also tells why the left tackle, a position that nobody ever notices, is the second highest paid position in professional football. No joke. They make more than running backs. Crazy.

Interesting book for the human interest story, and a little bit for the football economics. But not as great as Moneyball.

Glibly called “Freakonomics meets ESPN,” this book is neither as fun to read nor as provocative as Freakonomics (or, for that matter, ESPN). But they bring up a lot of interesting things, like how scoring (especially in the NBA) is a horrible indicator of value to a team, how quarterbacks in the NFL are woefully inconsistent from season to season, and how Stanford basketball is the most wondrous and underrated sport to behold.

Okay, not that last bit. But worth reading for fantasy nerds like me.

BJR gave me this book a few years back, but I finally got around to read it, prompted by the World Baseball Classic last month. It’s a book written in the late 1980s, about baseball in Japan, and the mixed success of American players there. It’s a really interesting book — although probably only really worth finding if you’re both interested in baseball and interested in Japan — otherwise maybe it’s a little on the esoteric side of things. I’m pretty sure that things have changed dramatically in the last 15-20 years, so would really be interested in a followup. There probably aren’t a lot of books like this, so this one was cool to have.

Other bit #1: TO in Big D.

Terrell Owens will be fantastic in Dallas this year, I think. Next year, he’ll lose his mind and take the whole Cowboys team with him. Good trade? I don’t know. But it’ll make awesome television. And holy cow, that guy is in incredible physical shape. If his mind were in the same shape, he’d be the richest guy on the planet. Or curing cancer. Either way.

Other bit #2: Rooting for Bradley

I was watching the Pitt-Bradley game yesterday with conflicted emotions. On the one hand, I have Pitt in my bracket going to the Elite Eight (note to self: stop betting on the Big East). On the other hand, you’ve got to root for the Braves. And underdogs in general. So my new rule, I think, is not to root for my brackets, but let the chips fall where they may — but pull for the underdogs, mostly. Exceptions to the rule: UK (even at a #8 seed, they’re not exactly an underdog), USC (always), and Duke, UConn & UNC, all perennial powerhouses. Arizona I’m on the fence about.

The lineups are just crazy loaded with talent, and I think the International flavor makes it pretty fun. The regions are a little wacky — Asia makes sense, as does the Caribbean (mostly), but having South Africa in our region is a little weird. Actually, I suppose that having them in any region is a little weird.

Anyway, I was all set today to lord a US win over Canada over my Canuck co-workers (who, I’m certain, are not even aware that the WBC is going on or that Canada has enough baseball players to field a team with 9 whole players). Sadly, it seems that Canada can not only field a team of what appears to be a full complement of 25ish, but they can ball pretty well.

We spotted them an 8-0 lead, but now we’re starting to come back. It’s 8-6 after a Grand Salami in the 5th. Woot.

  sign up on slide

We’ll have his 2nd game this coming Saturday — hopefully he’ll do as well this time. Was afraid for a while that this season might be a TV-only season, but I think he’s a gamer. What a great kid.

I watched the Little League World Series championship today — man, what a game! It had everything — two small island teams playing against each other (Hawaii & Curacao), the defending champs (Curacao), a comeback from 3 runs down in the last at bat (Hawaii tied it with a spectacular suicide squeeze play and some other timely hitting), and a home run to win it for Hawaii in the bottom of the 7th (which is extra innings in LL). I found myself getting pretty wrapped up in the game — was super-excited to see the Hawaii kids not lose hope down three runs in their last at-bat and eventually come through to win. Curacao played great, too — in fact, pretty much every kid on the field was completely unbelievably great at the game.

Anyway, during the game I really got excited — was reminded by a phrase in a James Taylor song: "There is a feeling like the clenching of the fist…" — and started thinking about the times when I was a kid and really felt the thrill of a game. There were lots of times when I felt that thrill, or the pain of a loss, or even the left-out feeling of not participating. It’s interesting that you don’t get many of those moments as an adult.

And with Sam, I can’t help but wonder about his times to come — good, bad, indifferent. And I’m just incredibly excited that he has all of that in front of him. Who knows what he’ll do, who he’ll be, where he’ll go. Having a baby around is just an incredibly optimism-creating thing.

Or it could be that I’m a little loopy because of the whole no-sleep thing.