First of all, WARNING - SURGICAL PICTURES BELOW... I crashed on my bike last fall. Broke my elbow. Proximal radius fracture. What I didn't know at the time was that I also separated my shoulder. It turns out I have a high pain tolerance so the extent of the damage wasn't detected until we did an MRI. After I got the MRI, I had a conversation with the orthopedist... I am starting a list of things you never want your orthopedist to say and the first entry is: "Whoa, turns out there's lot's of stuff going on here. I'm going to refer to you to my shoulder guy..." I'm processing this, thinking... Wait a minute, I thought you were the shoulder guy and then he clarifies by saying "I mean my shoulder surgeon..." All well and good, I sign up to do the surgery which is introduced in pre-op as: "...one of the more painful surgeries you can have..." So that's how I got to this point. Just great, I'm thinking knowing that I have signed up for up to six months off the bike if there is ligament or tendon damage. MRIs are great but don't always show everything so I go in not knowing what all is going to happen but I do know that their will be lots of bone cutting to resolve a bone spur and the shoulder separation results which included bone grinding on bone situation that is going to require two bones getting 'shortened to open the space between them back up'. Anyway it does in fact hurt like hell but not enough to keep using the narcotics which turn out to be worse than the pain. Well they worked well for the first four days but after that, holy crap am I ever NOT cut out to be a drug addict! So why did it hurt so bad? Well consider this:

Bone Spur Before Surgery: Surgical Roto-Rooter tool: ...in profile: and of course you can't just leave the crap in there so you need to head in with a shop vac as well: and when all is said and done what was a bone spur now looks like this: I just can't get a good feeling about having power tools inserted into the living flesh of my shoulder in an arthroscopic procedure Except... A concentration of pain in a short period will relieve the long term pain I have been dealing with and, as the title sums up,

The End Is Near!

I can't tell you how ready I am for that end but I really, really, really am! And then I can get back on the bike (which is what it's all about anyway!) Chronic pain is best experienced in the past!