Surgery

I finally had my surgery last friday to remove the metal "pin" from my shoulder. I had broken my collar bone into 5 pieces in september '04 "mountain biking" in houston. i had a pin put in to keep it together so that it would heal properly.

A lot of people ask why i didn't just leave the pin in there. people give me looks like i'm just getting it removed so that i can show off the pin, or get pain killers after surgery or have some kind of addiction to pain. The real reason i needed to get it removed is so that i could break it again. Since i mountain bike and race motorcycles on a regular basis, the chances of me breaking my collar bone a couple more times is pretty high. its just a given, if you do these activities on a regular basis, you're going to break your collar bone at some point. Look around the next time you go to an event like a motorcycle or mountain bike race, and i'll bet you see a lot of unsymetrical collar bones.

If i were to break it with the pin still in the bone, the bone would have no choice but to break on the ends, making things very messy. Now that the pin is removed, it can once again break in the middle and do less damage.

So, here it is. my trophy. a 4" long screw with a hex head and a tip made to dig into some flesh and bone. its been 3 days since i had it removed, and i'm already feeling pretty normal again. about 4 more weeks of healing and i can ride without the worry of tearing things up in the event of a crash!