Don’t do this, kids. Unless you KNOW they can do it. Photo: YouTube//Screenshot
Blair Conklin is no stranger to injuries. Shoulders in particular are prone to damage if you spend a lot of time riding waves, and Conklin has found that out the hard way. Twice. Recently, he dislocated his shoulder while riding some weird, backwashy waves that were super fun… until they weren’t.
Conklin actually extended a trip to Mexico and wasn’t planning on being there the day his most recent dislocation happened, but as they say, “Man plans and God laughs.”
The accident that led to the injury was fairly innocuous — nothing that Conklin hasn’t done before — but the final product is hard to look at. Dislocated shoulders are obvious when they’re as bad as Conklin’s, but with the help of someone who knows what they’re doing, it’s often possible to reset the joint. Ideally, though, that person knows what they’re doing because they are a doctor of some kind, but Conklin had a friend give it a shot on the beach before heading to the hospital. Pro tip: lying in the sand while someone yanks on your arm haphazardly is not recommended. But hey, sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.
Thankfully, a doctor was able to get things back in the right place, but shoulders, once dislocated, have a habit of dislocating again.
“That guy was good,” Conklin said from the bed after the doctor popped things back into place. “That took like two minutes. They did a better job here than when I did it the first time.”
After taking a closer look at his shoulder, however, it was clear that all was not as it should be.
“The MRI came back with worse results than expected and it was highly encouraged that I have my labrum repaired so that my shoulder will be less likely to dislocate again,” Conklin wrote. “After a second dislocation my odds of it happening again were about 94 percent. After going through the surgery the likelihood is only 25 percent.”
