przed

Yesterday was the first serious test for my black belt: four hours, covering fitness, sparring, forms, weapons and self-defence. My main goals for the test were not mucking it up, and not getting injured.

I didn't quite manage that second goal.

It mostly went well. I got through the fitness section, did well in sparring (earning surprised respect from one of the younger whipper snapper black belts I managed to hold my own against), and did all my forms solidly with only a few glitches.

Then we got to self-defence, always my bête noire. They started us off with simple shoulder rolls from the ground. Which I shouldn't have even attempted. (I don't do break falls or take downs any more, since there's a high probably of a serious back or neck injury if I do.) But I was feeling cocky, and I thought "it's just a little shoulder roll. How bad can it be?"

Pretty bad, it turns out. Though not nearly as bad as it could have been.

I got out of alignment on the first roll, landed badly, and wrenched something in my shoulder. It took a while before they could get me up off the floor, and then one of our instructors taped up my arm so it wouldn't jar, one of the school's office staff escorted me to Emergency to have it checked out, and another instructor drove my car home.

The ER doctor was a bit taken aback at my x-ray (that shoulder got completely rebuilt when I was three, so even with no injury it's a bit of a mess) but he reckons it's a separated shoulder with an associated sprained ligament. They gave me a sling, and have referred me to the orthopaedic clinic at the hospital, who I've been assured will call within two days.

A quick search on the Mayo clinic site shows it's not the worst injury to have, and they mostly heal within 2 to 3 weeks as long as you haven't ruptured a ligament. But for a few days at least, I'm going to have to a lot one handed. (This is my first foray into typing, which isn't going too badly, but I wouldn't want to be on the computer for long.)

Hopefully, this has knocked the last of my stupid pride about not being able to do certain things during training. Rolls are now officially on the no fly list, along with all the other ground work stuff.

The one silver lining to this particular cloud is that I'm going to take a day or two off work to get to the point where moving wrong and sneezing don't cause eye-watering agony, and that means a couple of days of watching TV and movies. Which I haven't done in months! Yay for silver linings!