$#@%&#@!! I did it AGAIN!!

About a year ago, I was riding my bicyle to Downtown L.A. to visit Amy Suzzanne's office at Cal. Plaza, on top of what I still think they call Bunker Hill.  Turning right onto Cesar Chavez from Soto Street, I could see a long bridge ahead...a bridge that crosses the L.A. River...and one that had no shoulder (or room at all!) for a bicycle.  So... I got off, put the bike on the narrow sidewalk... and rode along it.. on the right-side of the bridge.  Unfortunately, when I got to the end, the sidewalk came to an abrupt end and there was something like a "high double curb" in my path.  I don't know what possessed me, I must have had a flashback to when I was thirteen and jumped such curbs all of the time on my Schwinn Singray... but I decided to try and lift up the front end... and "jump" the curb.

That was my first mistake.  The second was panicking in mid air and grabbing the front brake.

You can guess the rest.  I went over the handlebars, as my father used to say: "ass over teacup"... and landed, with my full weight, on my outstreched right arm.  I jammed my shoulder really badly!!  Nothing broken or out of joint...but I am sure that I thrashed the muscles and tendons around the shoulder-socket.  Yuichi (the Cruel), my trainer, said that I more-than-likely tore my rotator cuff.  We've been rehab-ing it for over a year...and - although it has never been quite right, it's much improved.

So yesterday, we get a late-morning call at home to clear-out of the house for yet another "house showing"...Aims was still trying to sleep (she got home at 4:00 A.M.!!) ....but I had to get her up... She couldn't take Beloved to the office (although sometimes late on weekends she will...Bee is VERY good company, I must say!)

On my list of pressing errands (the proverbial "Honeydew list") - I had to go to Costco on Los Feliz to make sure that all of our Rx's are refilled before we leave for India...so I went outside to the back of Amy's car to get Beloved's "Sherpa Bag" (a soft kennel...we need as much "practice time" as we can get with the Sherpa Bag before the long flight to Hyderabad...24-hours in such an enclosed space is going to be tough on her!) out of the back of Amy's car.  I'm chatting with the neighbors and walking (at the same time...unfortunately all too similar to the proverbial "walking and chewing gum" at the same time!)...

I'm focusing on opening the rear hatch on our Ford Escape, when I step on the uneven pavement between the asphlat of the street and the cement gutter. I turn my right ankle, and fell down, like I had been shot...first on my left knee (skinning it up pretty badly!) and then...again with all my weight, on my LEFT (i.e., my "good") SHOULDER.

BAM!!  This one made the bicycle "endo" feel like a feather had landed on me in comparison!!  I jammed my arm directly up into the shoulder-socket so hard, it knocked the breath out of me!  Our neighbors came running over to see if I was O.K. (more-than-likely to see if I was still breathing!!)  "Owww!"  As I gasped for my first breath, - that was all I could say!  The sting of my knee passed into a sickening and familiar screaming pain in my left shoulder joint.

I crawled to my feet and opened the hatch of the car.  "Wait, wait..." said our neighbor, Ralph, who is a retired doctor... "Don't you want to go to the hospital or something?"  (The fall must have looked more spectacular than it was!)  As it usually does in this type of situation, the adrenaline kicked in (just as it did that fine afternoon on the Cesar Chavez bridge...I actually rode all the way to Bunker Hill that day...but I ended up taking the Gold Line train home when the shoulder stiffend-up and wouldn't move!) and I just said "I want(ed) to go into the house".

$#!+!! Well, I really did it this time.  As I sat in our bathroom. Amy got my skinned knee all doctored up (thanks, Maximus, you are the best!!)  But my shoulder is just plain messed UP!  I can't lift it, period...I have to drive one-handed, and it took me twenty-minutes to put on a shirt this morning.  Another ten to tie my shoes!  I'm a basket-case.  Last night I took an Ambien so I could sleep.  I know I talked to Sacco and Mary Ann on the phone last night...I'm certain that I must have thrown in a couple of "I love you, man's" - - if I talked to anybody else and don't remember...sorry.

I was supposed to play golf today out in Beaumont with Andy and David Trinkle for the latter's birthday, but I could no-more swing a golf club this afternoon than I could flap my arms and fly!!  I just hope it gets better soon so I can play once more before we have to leave So. Cal.  I'm more-than-a-little p.o.'d because it is a perfect day for golf out there...and all I can do is sit here and look longingly out the window at the blue sky ... and not a single leaf is blowing in the trees in our front yard

I was going to get a sling for the shoulder this morning, but they didn't have any at the Rite-Aid store...and the ones at the medical supply place on Valley Blvd. in Alhambra were really expensive.  I'll just "tough it out"...

If my Amy is reading this, I can just hear her now: 

"Yeah...right!!"