I’m hurting. I have strep throat (and some penicillin) and a very touchy left shoulder which I threw out of socket earlier this week, skating during a fifteen-minute break from work on Haight Street.

And I didn’t even fall on it.

It was one of those days where it’s 75 degrees (I spontaneously bought a tank top), and I was in the Street, jogging through my flip tricks when I started getting into some really clean varial heelflips; I figured I’d stretch one out over a patch of discolored pavement. Traffic was kind of heavy, but it broke and I set my board down, pushed a couple times, set up, and popped.

Half-way through the trick, the board rotating the way it should, I rotated my body to reallign with it when I feel a sick pressure give in my shoulder. I know what this is, I kick my board away, and fall to my knees in the middle of Haight Street.

My left arm hung limp, and I knew it was out of socket. And while this had happened several times before, I was no more used to the pain and, as a result, bellowed like a wounded water buffalo as I took my left wrist with my functional right hand and rose it slowly above my head.

Shhlu-Pop!

I felt a bundle of tendons and muscles and sinew squirm around as the head of my ulna slips back, which was an immense relief, but I could barely move my arm, and my whole body kept shaking. I don’t know if anybody saw this spectacle, but I really wish I had some cell phone footage to post to the page.

Now, later in the week, my left shoulder feels alright, except when, after a shower, I try to towel off my back my back a certain way. Under my bicep is a thin, tight line of heat I wish I could explain (is a nerve pinched?). I haven’t tried skating since then. I pretty spooked, now that I don’t have to fall directly onto my arm to dislocate it. Given all that and my upcoming move to New York, I really don’t want to push it and end up needing $20,000 rotator cuff surgery in a city without socialized health care.

Beyond that, I’m drinking 7-Up, eating chicken soup, and throwing out my apartment’s garbage (i.e. my possessions) by the bagful. Well, not exactly, but I did throw out a plastic sack of musty boxers, socks, and t-shirts today. I’m looking forward to the day when I pack up two Weekender duffels, stuff my laptop into my Freight bag, and zip Truman up in a kitty carrier before heading to my one-way flight to NYC. Yet even with less than a month to go, it seems like a long way off.

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