Getting Injured with Parkinson's

I separated my shoulder---badly. What is a separated shoulder? Good question. Here is the Mayo Clinic's definition:

A separated shoulder is an injury to the ligaments that hold your collarbone to your shoulder blade. In a mild separated shoulder, the ligaments may just be stretched. In severe injuries, ligaments may be completely ruptured

The obvious question comes to mind: Dean Roberts, how did you manage to do this? Well, I will give you three scenarios and you guess the correct one.

1. I trusted Billy Joel to be my designated driver.
2. I participated in a Unity March with Donald Trump and something went horribly wrong.
3. I slipped playing freeze tag with my daughter and her munchkin friends.

Did you guess #3? Great job! It almost makes up for your many personal and professional failures in life! (I'm kidding)

Moriah Carey and I have the same sling!

I tend to view Parkinson's disease as an overlay on an otherwise very healthy guy. It impacts me on occasion but, for the most part, I can do the things I enjoy fairly easily. It is when you throw another variable in this mix---usually a head cold---that I really "feel" having PD. Well, nothing to date had prepared me for the pain I was to feel having a shoulder injury on top of Parkinson's disease. The closest experience I have had to this much deep pain is when I read an entire blog post by the Perky Parky from the perspective of her dog. (I'm not kidding)

The best thing to do for my type of injury is to sling the arm and rest the shoulder which makes good sense. The problem is that I suffered a right arm injury and my main symptom---an arm tremor---is fairly localized in my right arm. Good God, talk about pain at night when the should joint grew stiff and then the tremor kicked in. What it also did was make it incredibly hard to sleep and we know that lack of sleep often leads to increased symptoms which messes up my shoulder further...it is a pain train.

Fast forward a few weeks to a scene at AP's feel-goodery Montessori School:

Teacher MoonBeam: Bryan, you seem to be moving gingerly.

(Before I can respond, AP saunters by)

AP: Dad hurt his f@!king shoulder playing tag. That f@!king shoulder may never heal.

(Ithaca parents engage in silent judging. End scene)

Now my daughter is a clear juvenile delinquent but, I will confess, this one is on me. My colorful use of my favorite word made AP think that "bleeping shoulder" was a medical diagnosis similar to "tennis elbow" or "plantar fasciitis." This cracked me up and, despite the constant pain, helped me regain my perspective on things.*

Living with Parkinson's is going to be different, and as in this case, more painful (at times) than a traditional existence but I need to keep things in focus. The best thing I can do is use the experience to learn and grow from it. The pain may be severe but my daughter is still hilarious, Ithaca is beautiful right now, and the Mets are in 1st place---what I'm getting at is life is good and that needs to be the paradigm in which I live.

*BR's Note: The semantics are no doubt lost on the Montessori peaceniks who would love nothing more than to see me flogged by Bernie Sanders while Dave Iverson narrates the event for NPR. Sadly, I can pay their full tuition so my David Mamet-like dialogue will continue to be tolerated.