Oh No Another Injury that wasn’t in the Brochure

Last Sunday ended up quite a bit different to what we thought it would on Sunday morning. We went up to the neighbouring Danish run training center for a game of squash. Max had come back from the States full of enthusiasm to play some sports. The options are limited here so he bought back a volleyball/badminton set along with tennis balls, squash balls and ping pong balls. So he was itching to get some game going. We had a short warm up and he was ready to start a game. He was quite aggressive and has a good eye for the ball. He was up, then I got up a bit then he started to come back. He hit a ball that bounced back deep into the left back corner. I ran over flicked the ball back with a reaching out backhand and then to stop quickly and get back to the center of the court, I pushed off the wall with my left arm. Oh no, that felt weird and what’s worse it still feels weird. I realised with sinking diamay, my left shoulder was dislocated. We tried with Ramona or Max to lift it back into position but no such luck. Max dashed back to the Adra office to get his Landcruiser as would have to drive somewhere to get attention. Ramona called some other volunteers to ask if they knew of any adequate medical places we could go. There are some local village clinics, but after having seen the Gairo one, I said no lets go into Arusha even though it is a 30 min drive as they will have better qualified people. The bad thing about that drive is the large number of speed bumps and judder bars along that road. Not what a sore shoulder needs.
One of the ex-volunteers is a nurse at the Arusha hospital now. Luckily Ramona had her number so we called her while driving and she then called the doctor on duty to let him know we would be there shortly. Turns out he is an orthopaedic of all things, lucky for me as I was then envisaging a 6 hour drive along a rough road to Nairobi in Kenya. After not too long of a wait and being shuffled around 3 different rooms the doctor came in and took me to a small theatre for a general sedation while he put the shoulder back in place. I woke up all bandaged up but no longer in pain thank goodness.
So now it is two weeks in a sling then light duties for quite a while and physiotherapy though I can’t see that being too effective here. It means it will further delay our return to Gairo to finish installing the pumps for those poor drought stricken villagers. TIA

So between Ramona I we have now dislocated 2 joints in 7 months while in Tanzania. The irony is it is not to do with work but playing sport in our free time.