The year: 2008

Me: My shoulder hurts. It hurts all the time and I can’t even open a door it hurts so much.

Husband: You need to see a doctor.

Doctor: You need a total shoulder replacement

Long story short

1. SURGERY–complete shoulder replacement–cobalt chrome humeral ball, a prosthetic rod about 5 inches long, and a plastic socket.

1. Had to have a substitute teacher start my year for me. Ugh.

2. Pain and exercise (some of the pain caused by the exercise, but mostly the surgery)

3. Almost a year later I’m good to go. I retired from teaching June 19th and and then I broke my humerus boogie boarding in San Diego, CA. on August 2, 2009. (The humerus is the bone of the upper arm or forelimb, forming joints at the shoulder and the elbow).

You can see the break right where the rod ends.

Broken humerus–oh well.

1. Couldn’t use my arm for a long time, so my physical therapy went on hold. Not good. Six years later I’m still limited and with pain, but not anywhere near as bad as in the beginning, thank God.

But wait! I didn’t stop there. I broke my foot doing Zumba (so much fun when you have the correct footwear) just before we moved to Mexico. I spent two years with a bum foot, lots of pain and it is all my own fault. I didn’t seek medical care in the first place. Dumb me. Now I have lots of hardware in my foot too. I had what they call a triple arthrodesis…fusion in three places. Now I have one motion–the walking motion: nothing sideways, just up and down. But I can walk without pain now. Whoopee!

I had the surgery done in San Diego, but the follow-up x-rays were taken as I was healing back here in So. Baja. These are photos of the x-rays (which weren’t very good to begin with). But you can get the picture…lots of hardware in my foot.

This isn’t the actual x-ray…it is the photo of the x-ray.

This is a photo of the x-ray and you can see La Paz in it.

A week after surgery.

Now you know why they call me The Bionic Woman. Oh, and not to worry–I do not set off the alarms at the airport.