On August 9th, 2014 the family took a vacation down to Ocean City, MD. The drive down took a little over 8 hours and traffic really wasn’t bad at all. Waze had us go over the George Washington on the way down through NY. We arrived around 4 o’clock unpacked and walked over to the beach.
All the kids were in the water having a good time, riding the waves in. Kelly was in and said I should go get my bathing suit and come in. I ran back up and put my suit on to join them. Body surfed in on a couple of waves. Then it happened. Took a wave in and kind of got turned a little bit and my shoulder hit the ground. Only my shoulder hit the ground and I felt something pop.
When I sat up on the beach feeling my shoulder I knew immediately that something was seriously wrong. I could feel my collar bone in a place that it did not belong. I didn’t know at first if it was broken or what was wrong. I lifted my arm feeling the bone and felt it pop back into place. That was the end of my swimming for vacation. I went back up to the condo and took a shower and decided I needed to go to the hospital to have it checked out. I needed to know what was wrong and how to fix it.
My first thought when my shoulder hit and I felt the pop was how am I going to swim 10k in Bermuda? Then I thought about the Call To Honor Triathlon and Century Rides I had signed up for.
Kelly brought me to the emergency room and they took an X-Ray, that you can see below.
Turns out that it was a Grade 3 Separation of my shoulder. They gave me a sling, some pain medication and sent me on my way. The only other advice was to make an appointment with an Orthopedic when I got home.