I graduated from Physical Therapy!! My shoulder is all better. It hurt a lot more during this last session, but he was kind of kicking my butt a bit, I think to make sure I was really healed. I can do pull-downs of 30+ pounds with no problem, in front of or behind my head. And I can do all kinds of other resist stuff. So it's all right.

He told me my shoulders are "hypermobile". It's unusual that I seem not to be double-jointed anywhere else, though my hips are actually unusually flexible as well, so there's that. A lot of people will have extra flexibility in all their joints-- I actually have a friend who's really messed-up because of this, with problems all over the place. But for me, no, it just means my shoulders slide out of their sockets pretty easily. It's fine as long as they slide out in a direction where my muscles can support them and pull them back in-- there's no pain, because the ligaments and soft tissues and complicated interrelated shit that makes up a shoulder (what a complicated joint, btw) are all perfectly happy to do this. However, if I have it at an angle where they can't, that's where I have the problem.
So I'm going to keep doing the exercises he gave me, to make the muscles and ligaments and what-have-you stronger and tighter, to reduce the angles my arm can be at while it's out of the socket. But anyway. There I am. I'm buff and tough and totally ready for action.

Which is good, because on Saturday I was doing things like this:




yeah, that's the bad shoulder. Didn't hurt! The only thing that hurt was intro high-fives. Which, the PT pointed out, is my angle of greatest risk. So... I guess that's a training goal, to keep doing those exercises until high-fives don't hurt.

It sounds like it could be a club name. Where fake-tanned pop-collar douchebags go to pick up skinny bottle-blond half-dressed whores on platform shoes.
But no. It's a crappy thing I keep doing to myself. Oh well, I had to go to PT anyway, so I might as well get my money's worth.
It hurt a lot more when it came out this time-- I saw stars and had to sit down (well, after finishing the jam) and sort myself out. Yes, yes, of course I was playing roller derby at the time. Phooey. I had a brace on, which was damned uncomfortable, but it was a variable-support brace, and I'd braced it to prevent my shoulder going backward, which was how it came out before, or so I'd thought-- last night it came out forward. Blegh.
I forgot to make my appointment for PT when at the doctor the other day, so I will have to do that. This will just remind me to do it.

The orthotics guy called and told me about the brace they could order for me. (I'm borrowing one right now from a friend who had shoulder surgery, and it's an adjustable one. It sucks to skate in. Not only was it ineffective, it also was made of neoprene and felt like I was like a baked potato in a microwave-- seriously, I walked up a flight of stairs with my skate bag and almost passed out.) Apparently I have a deductible *and* a co-pay, so basically I'd be paying the full $450 price tag on the item myself. Urgh. I'll see what the PT guy says first.

Queen City Roller Girls' travel team, the Lake Effect Furies, handily defeated the Gotham Girls' B-team, the Wall Street Traitors, in a 40-minute expo bout tonight. It was pretty awesome to watch (I watched it via live streaming video on derbynewsnetwork.com, but should you be interested, the footage is available there archived), especially because it was our intro to the Derby News Network crowd.

I am very, very sad we couldn't go, though. Z was going to go as the mascot, and he would've had a great time-- Gotham has Jeerleaders, and the headlining bout of the night was Charm City Roller Girls, out of Baltimore-- they wear yellow jerseys and have a mascot, a guy in a banana suit called Bane-Ana, who got up to some ridiculously amusing shenanigans with the Jeerleaders.
The Lake Effect Furry would've had a blast with them.