Not Broken Enough to Fix: My First Real Lesson in Accepting Limitations

I slid inside the off-white cylinder of the MRI machine, feeling an odd kinship with my infant daughter’s diaper cream.  The anticipated claustrophobia never materialized, but the technician forcibly reminded me of our age gap when the classic rock I requested came on as music from the early 2000s.

This scan had been 16 years in the making.  I have had shoulder issues that entire time, possibly from a boxing injury in college unless I made that up.  For over a decade, I have bounced around the world on military assignments and brought my issue up to doctors on four continents. 

16 Years of Temporary Fixes

In Germany, a doctor prescribed the oddest stretch I’ve ever done.  It worked until it didn’t.  In Korea, another doctor gave me the highly specific and thoughtful medical advice of “just go YouTube shoulder physical therapy videos and try those.”  In Hawaii, my physical therapist said she’d done all she could do and the next step would be an MRI.  I refused, thinking that since the MRI office there had a three-plus month backlog, there were a lot of folks who needed it more than me.

Now here I was, lying in a plastic tube like store brand toothpaste as the MRI machine clanked its way through imaging my body.  I still don’t know what tipped me over the edge this time, but I was excited.  Maybe now, after dozens of appointments over a decade and a half, I’d have an answer.  I’d know what was wrong, and then my doc could give me the magical exercise that would fix things and take me back to a time I can’t even remember now—one where my shoulder didn’t hurt.

The Scroll of Prophecy Unfurls

A few days later, I sat in my doc’s office as she went over the results with me.  She immediately jumped into medical terminology, using more syllables than a Scrabble expert with an ax to grind and vowels to burn.  I understood nothing she said, but this was what I wanted—specific knowledge of my issue, backed up by centuries of medical data going back to the first time some crazy Italian guy cut open someone else to see the squishy parts on the inside.

“Am I going to make it, doc?” I asked.  “I’m only 35, there’s so much life ahead of me.”

“No,” she said.  “The small tear in your rotator cuff isn’t going to kill you.”

Victory.  Finally, after so many years of appointments, guesswork, and endless YouTube videos, I had an answer.  No longer would I have to muddle my way through life with a perpetually aggravated shoulder.  Now we could make real progress in fixing me.  I felt like a man at the end of a quest, the Scroll of Prophecy in his hands slowly unfurling to reveal its divine contents. 

The Verdict That Fixed Nothing

“You could go see the orthopedic surgeon if you want,” the doc continued, “but they’ll advise against surgery.  With where it is and how small it is, they’d end up doing more harm than good trying to fix it.”

The soundtrack to my ascendant triumph collapsed like a breathless tuba player falling over into the rest of the orchestra.  “So, what do we do?” I asked.

She shrugged.  “Same as you have been.  Keep doing physical therapy exercises, hopefully that prevents any further damage.”

Same as I had been, I thought.  Status quo.  Back to rolling my shoulder out every few minutes as I pretend to type on my computer at work.  Back to cracking my neck with the sound of a fully automatic fifty-call as family and friends look on with horror.  Back to taking calming breaths as my shoulder hurts when I cut chicken on a cutting board.

I finally knew what was wrong, and it changed nothing—modern medicine at its finest.  The Scroll of Prophecy unrolled in my hands, only to show the untalented scribbling of an angsty middle schooler’s attempt to draw a one fingered salute. 

Square One, No Path Forward

After thanking the doc and making follow-up appointments, my new knowledge rattled uselessly in my skull.  I got in my car, feeling the grinding, dull ache in my shoulder as I grabbed the steering wheel. This time, though, it felt different.  Not the physical sensation—the emotional accompaniment. 

I had returned to square one, but now the board had no path forward.  This ache in my shoulder as my fingers gripped the steering wheel?  This was the best-case scenario.  What might worst case look like?  Would I be able to keep mountain biking as I got older and my shoulder got weaker?  Would I be able to pick my kids up and put them on my shoulders?  The answer that fixed nothing still broke something.

This was just…it.

The Only Rebellion Against Permanence

I think this hit as hard as it did because it’s my first tangible brush with aging.  We all know intellectually that our bodies start to fail us later in life, but there’s a difference between seeing it happen to others and feeling it in yourself.  Where my shoulder pain was an annoyance I planned on getting around to fixing someday, now I realize that someday will never come.  Some things can’t be fixed, only managed.

So tonight I’ll do my exercises.  Tomorrow I’ll do them.  Next year I’ll do them.  Each repetition protecting what remains, preventing what could come, the only rebellion against permanence I have left.

Not broken enough to fix.  Not fixed enough to forget.  But not so broken I stop trying.