Back in May of 2008, I was playing third in my softball league when a high fly ball headed to my right.  I spent a lot of energy to chase the foul ball down and had finally made it to the down trajectory when the umpire called it out of play (past the benches).  Frustrated at having spent a significant amount of energy for nothing, I simply took my left arm and swiped it underhand across my body and snatched it out of the air as the ball came down in front of me.  What I was not expecting was the loud pop that came from my left shoulder.  Although it sounded bad, it did not seem to impair my motion at the time so I continued playing the rest of the game.  In the weeks that followed, my shoulder started to flare up every time I raised my arm past shoulder height or extended my forearm greater than 10 degrees from my side.  Having had my right shoulder rebuilt already I was familiar with rotator cuff tears, but it did not feel the same.  I continued to give it time to heal and finally gave up last January and went to a local sports injury/medicine center.  Unfortunately, I’ve been there several times for my other shoulder, both my inside knee medials, multiple hand fractures and a broken elbow – yes, all sports injuries .. sigh.  After my MRI it was decided I did not have a tear, but rather an impingement.  This resulted in my first Cortisone shot (NEVER EVER AGAIN!) and a series of therapy appointments to strengthen the area around the rotator cuff.

Due to work, my sessions were at 7:00am.  On the second to last day I was looking for something in my truck and noticed my insurance card was just thrown in the glove compartment so I took the time to put it in my standard place in case I needed to retrieve it someday.  As I pulled into the patient parking lot, I noticed it was again completely empty, but a beer bottle was sitting in my preferred parking place.  Preferred representing the calculated parking location based on variables such as A=distance between other cars, B=devoid of sharp objects to puncture the tires, C=entry effort and D=exit effort.  Preferred then represents maxA + maxB +minC + minD = max in range[driver’s ed parking lot to outdoor waterpark parking in Winter].  Quickly doing the math, I picked a spot on the side of the building in order to compensate for appointments that came after mine.

2/3rds of the way through my session, my shoulder was starting to feel the burn.  It is amazing how little weight it takes to fatigue an isolated rotator cuff.  In the middle of a rowing set, an individual comes up and asks if I drive a black truck.  Immediately, I surmised I was not going to be pleased with what followed.  Sure enough, he was delivering something to the building and backed into the rear of my truck.  Unbelievable — suddenly the pain drained out of my shoulder and headed right for my butt.  I finished my therapy and headed out to see the damage.

It ended up not being that bad.  He somehow missed my side panels and the bumper successfully performed its role.

He provided me all of his insurance information and to his credit, took responsibility for the mistake offering apologies.  I called up his agent, AllState, submitted my claim and scheduled an appointment to have the damage assessed.  I was somewhat annoyed I had to flex some time at work to get the truck to the assessor, but made it there at the set time.  Expecting a lengthy discussion regarding what they were and were not going to do, I patiently waited as the assessor looked over the damage.  10 minutes later, he returned, asked me where I wanted it fixed at, called up the service manager there, verified that a new bumper was available, confirmed the charge and cut me a check for over $540 to cover the replacement.   Wow, kudos to AllState for making things right.  I thought I would share this story since often times I rail against bad service encountered in almost a daily frequency.  There are definitely some bright spots out there and they should be recognized for their efforts.

As a note, this is the last time I test fate and touch my insurance card in the morning.