A little bit, about the broken bit
This is a short note about my broken shoulder. It sounds alarming and it looks worrying. It is, but regardless, it is not as time-critical as other health complications. It is somewhat painful, and inconvenient.
The shoulder has a socket, with the arm attached into it. The inner bit of the socket is called the glenoid cavity. It is smooth, and it offers low-resistance freedom like a well-lubed hinge. The shoulder unlike other joints offers a much wider and complex range of motions than say, the knee. The glenoid has a thin rim that runs around its edge, shaped like a near-perfect circle. It stops the ball from slipping out of its limit. It’s called the labrum, it’s cartilaginous and it’s the bit that’s partly torn and shifted (3pm to 6pm) when I had the fall. The humeral head (the ball) sits tightly in the glenoid cavity by the tension of the musles that run from your neck/back to it. There are also forces holding the arm in the socket, from the back, specifically the supraspinatus (the muscle above the ridge of your scapula), and infraspinatus (the slimmer wider muscle below it). My upper back muscles are pretty terrible, and I believe that’s why my shoulder slipped out that easily. I used my fingers between my armpit to slowly push the scapula towards the spine, adding tension, and resetting my shoulder. My shoulder blade is sticking out since the incident.
Falls and shoulder dislocations are very common. You are more prone to dislocating your shoulder once you cross the age of 40 and surgeries are not recommended. Surgeries are only recommended, if you have frequent dislocations that put you at a risk of further irreversible damage to the bone, not just the labrum because of added impact and friction from incidents or repeated use. When you’re a teenager, a surgery is recommended only for very severely damaged labrums.
Most shoulder dislocations do not require any form of intervention, and most doctors may never ever perform a MRI scan to verify the extent of the damage. It’s pretty bad in my case, and I was able to repeatedly dislocate my shoulder with little ease by simply moving my arm back and forth over two hours.
The thing about the labrum (rim of the glenoid cavity) is that it doesn’t repair itself like a muscle, and if it does, it heals really slowly. The surgery will include drilling holes around the glenoid cavity, put in pillars of sorts, and tie the hanging labrum firmly back in its place.
People may go years before deciding on surgery, depending on how often they dislocate. Some may never have surgery despite the dislocations. So, what I’m currently doing is waiting a month or so, resting, then with the help of the doctor, gauge if I notice any instability, to take a call. I know, I’m almost certainly need to go through it. The operation will however, limit my arm for a month, put me through excruciating pain, and I might take anywhere from 4 to 12 months before recovering entirely. I am taking the time to assess everything, since it is not time-critical.