bent

A few months back I did what most medical text will tell you is pretty hard for a grown-up to do: partially dislocated my own elbow in my sleep.  I was having a nightmare that I was moving back in with my ex and as we were unloading boxes I was realizing we didn’t have a coffee maker or any coffee! 

Now while I was having this dream I was curled up into a little ball with my left arm tightly locked between my knees.  And as I slept I was pulling with my knees, applying constant 4-5 hrs of tension on that joint… when I woke my elbow felt like I had hit my funny bone.  I thought it would go away but it didn’t.  

Later that day I showed it to a EMT friend who balk at the possibility I had dislocated it in sleep, he had a point considering in an adult it usually only occurs with a radial fracture. Even my doctor was doubtful at first joking "If you dislocate your elbow in your sleep do you call Ortho or a Shrink?" 

Days later the pain was still there, that ‘I hit my funny bone pain‘. It took a week for the pain to go from constant to intermittent. I had muscle weakness and in some positions right out failure.  I couldn't bend my elbow all the way, it hurt when I rotated my arm, and I developed a point tenderness at the joint. At that point my doctor agreed everything was backing up the fact that I actually dislocated my own elbow (real name: radial head dislocation) in my sleep.  

The whole thing is rather funny, painful but funny, it is commonly known as Nurse Maid's Elbow caused most often in toddlers when a caregiver tries to prevent a fall by pulling up on the arm.  “When longitudinal axial traction is placed on an extended pronated arm, the radial head may therefore slip or tear through the weak annular ligament into the radiocapitellar articulation”  My elbow was clearly back in joint so there was little to do but to power through it. 

Yep, power through. I have history with this. A few years back I dislocated my shoulder and tore my tricep pulling my bike heavily loaded with 4 year old Beach in a bike-trailer out of deep playground bark using more stubbornness and force than common sense and physics. Then I biked home to load the van for a 10 day river trip and drove to Montana. 

At some point in Montana I realized I couldn’t move my arm. That night camping at the Put In I started to feel the pain.  Facing 10 days with little chance of medical help I choose to ignore it. The only reason anyone found out was because I couldn’t row. Well I could push out but I couldn’t pull back. I could half row, which isn’t very helpful.  We happened to have a PT on one of the rafts traveling with us.  She, a 10 year veteran of her field, was blown away not just that I had concealed it but at what I had managed to do to my arm. I had managed an injury usually seen on one after being involved in a blunt force trauma.

It’s not that I am so tough, I am a huge baby, it is that I have a well developed ability to ignore or stuff any thing I can‘t process right away.  I broke my arm stacking wood, finished the pile before going in to look at it because I knew I wanted to finish and that if I saw my arm I wouldn’t be able to keep going.  I broke 4 bones in my foot dropping a razor scooter on it that one of my young soccer players left on the field.  I didn’t look at it until I got home because once again I knew I wouldn’t be able to do what I wanted if I acknowledged the injury- which at that moment was drive clutch.

So what is the point of all of this? Yesterday I ran 10 miles, slept hard, and at about 4 in the morning I rolled over to find BC.  When I pulled my left arm around the CRACK it made woke BC from a sound sleep.  It sounded exactly like a brittle stick snapping.  “What was that?!” He asked alarmed. 

“My elbow and it feels fantastic. I think I just fixed it.”  

Yep.  My elbow is swollen, it feels hot & wet inside (?), and throbbing today but it is 100% better than it has been for weeks.  I am convinced that CRACK was the ligament finally slipping back into place. For the first time in months I can fully bend my elbow!!! Sadly, rotating it still hurts.

cRaZy!!!! But good to go :) Crossfit anyone?