Pins come out in three days

We left New Orleans promptly on the morning after my injury. Changing our return flights was expensive and we ended up flying through Cleveland, adding a significant number of miles and a few hours to our trip. Still, considering my 100% displaced humerus—the trip could have been worse.

I maintained a steady level of percoset in my bloodstream and used a wheelchair whenever possible. While waiting to board our flight from Cleveland, I was one of five passengers seated near the gate in wheelchairs. A frantic airport employee rolled another wheelchair-bound passenger toward us shouting, “Hurry up!” and “Get out of my way!” With one arm in a sling and about 15 milligrams of percoset circulating in my system I was ill-equipped to respond. My four wheelchair companions, all older and clearly wiser travelers, stared calmly ahead, ignoring the fellow. When he finally wandered off, leaving behind the wheelchair containing his former passenger, she sighed with relief.

I don’t remember anything else. The rest of the trip was unremarkable. The percoset allowed all the details of our return travels to merge into memories of other trips, other flights.

Once I was home, our HMO was ready, willing, and able to care for me. Nobody had to worry about getting paid. A board certified trauma surgeon looked at my x-rays and recommended placing “pins” through my humerus to hold it together while it healed. The pins would remain in place for six weeks and require another operation to remove them. But, my doctor explained, this approach would greatly increase the likelihood my shoulder could regain a full range of motion.

If he said anything else it is lost in the fog of time. Those words, “full range of motion,” were all I needed to hear. I agreed to have four pins—roughly the size of #2 knitting needles—jammed through my muscles and into my bone. The surgeon tucked the ends of the pins under my skin and sewed up the incisions so no one would even know they were there. No one, that is, but me.

Here are a few of the questions I did not think to ask: Will the pins hurt? Will I need to take narcotics day and night to control the pain? Will I have to sleep sitting up? Will the pins press up under my skin and feel like I’m being stabbed from the inside? Will the pain get progressively worse over the six weeks of healing? Will I eventually realize I can go nowhere and do nothing without aggravating the constant pain? Answer to all of the above; yes.

Here’s the question I asked: When will I be able to do push-ups? Answer; three months.