A Recent Accidental Fall Leads to a Medical Follow-Up

So everyone knows that I really like to take pictures of scenic areas and such, right?

Well, on Tuesday, as my son and I were visiting a lighthouse, we went down by the rocks under the cliffs, and I took some fairly nice pictures. Unfortunately, my feet (particularly my left foot) got a bit wet, making the sole slippery. 

And, well, surely by now if you are reading this, you guessed: I fell. It was weird, because it happened so damn quickly, that I never even felt myself slipping. One second, it seemed I was standing, trying to step carefully onto the rock. The next moment, I was lying on the rock on my left side. Luckily, the rock was there to break my fall, or I might still be falling.

One positive: it quickly allowed me to forget the nagging back pains that had been troubling me beforehand. The bad news? Well, it did not knock any sense into my head, which was desperately needed. 

Some women came up and asked if I was okay, and I said that I was, mostly from embarrassment.

Then, however, I tried to get up. When I applied pressure to my left arm, it clearly dawned on me that what I had said to those women, that essentially everything was fine, might have been a lie, unbeknownst to me when I said it. My left shoulder hurt. Really hurt. So did my elbow, to a lesser extent. And there was some milder pain felt in my hip and my left hand. But the biggest pain by far was in my shoulder, which I could barely move.

I wrote about it a little bit more in detail in a blog entry yet to be published, which will be published soon enough. Probably tomorrow, actually.

But today, I went to the doctor's, on the advice of my brother and my girlfriend. There was a regular doctor's visit, and then there was a visit to the radiology office to get X-Rays. It appears that I sustained a torn rotator cuff. 

Initially, I could barely even move my left arm on it's own. And I just could not move my arm at all without some measure of discomfort, even serious discomfort. 

Over the past few days, however, that has calmed down. Right now, I can lift my arm up without too much of a problem, and without much pain. My elbow, which was bothering me a bit after the fall, especially while driving, seems largely to have become almost a non-factor. But my shoulder still pains me, especially when I move my arm backwards, like when I reach for the seatbelt, or try to open or close the car door. My arm would literally shake with effort just at pushing the door open or pulling it closed, so I have been doing it with my right, instead.

Slowly but surely, it is getting back to normal. The pain is not nearly as intense, and I feel actually a bit proud of myself for having taken care of this fairly quickly, before it grew worse. That is something that, admittedly, has not always been the case, such as with my left wrist injury many years ago, which I foolishly kept to myself, and which altered almost everything about how I do things with my hands and arms. Prior to the age of 12, I was a southpaw, and my left was my strong arm, the one that I not only write with, but threw a football with, say, both for strength and for aim. Now, I mostly only can still write with my left, and it feels almost like I had lost feeling with my left hand after that.

Ironically, this happened on my left side again. Prior to this, it was my right shoulder that seemed like the bad one. Hopefully, that will not change, and this will not be too serious. But time will tell in that regard, and at least this time, I actually am seeking professional medical advice. 

Will try to keep everyone posted.