I tore the labrum in my right shoulder pretty bad back in 07. Dang near ripped half of it out of the socket. Luckily worker's comp paid for it being that it happened while on the job. I was off work for almost 10 months because of it. Sad thing is, I should've only been out of work for about 7-8 months but because the worker's comp physician's advisor I guess was trying way too hard to save money, it ending up being ten months I was off because when my main doctor who handled the case wanted me to get an MRI with contrast right at the beginning, I guess adding the contrast cost too much because the MRI without it didn't show the whole picture so they decided to put me through about a month's worth of painful PT that probably added more damage to the injury that already needed surgery to fix it because when they did the MRI with contrast after the wasted PT, they knew right away surgery was the only solution.
Anywho, I was working as a well-driller deck hand for a guy who drills water wells for commercial properties and home-owners that live out in the country for drinking water and one day when we were tripping out of a hole that we didn't strike water on and because the operator the boss hired long before me to run is other drilling rig was kind of a prick, it didn't take long for me and him to not get along so well so I don't recall what it was he did that day to put me in a bad mood but anyways, since we were running the boss's rig at the time that was much fancier than the one we always ran, this rig carried about 400 feet of drill stem horizontally on the side of it and it had a revolver system in the derrick that stowed the preliminary 100 feet of drill stem.
Anyways, being that the side rack had to be filled first when you're tripping out of a hole, when the operator pulls the top stem up and locks onto the top collar of the one below it to hold it, the deck hand uses a pipe wrench to screw that piece of drill stem out of the one below it and when he picks it up and gets it high enough, its up to the deck hand to then swing the bottom of the stem onto the rack so that when he lowers the cable, the stem slides forward to stack it so then the deck hand twists the threaded piece thats attached to the winch out of that one and then the operator lowers the cable down to do the next one and then so on and so forth until all of it is out of the hole.
Well, being that he had me in a bad mood over something...this was a daily thing almost, my injury occurred when I shoved a little bit too hard on a piece of heavy drill stem as I was pushing it onto the storage rack so he could lower it to stow it and when you do this, your arm is extended not exactly all the way arm's length away from your body but not close either and your hand is about chest high so if you push too hard like I unintentionally did, it puts a lot of leverage on your shoulder and I felt a slight pop. Thought I had just pulled a muscle so being that it happened on a Friday, by Sunday my shoulder was hurting pretty bad so I made the call to my boss and told him what had happened and he said to head to the doctor. The rest is history. Lost about 5 percent of my range of motion when it was finally over and I could go back to work. Not for him, though. I was done with that...lol.
Surgery went well. They didn't have to slice my arm open like they did in the old days because they did the repair with a camera so I only have about 4 small scars on my shoulder where they went in.
