Date: 3/22/2000

The weather is still beautiful, other people are still stylin' in their 'vertibles, and mine still ain't here. Back to the story.

When I got back to Cali, I went snowboarding in Tahoe, my 3rd time, and my first on my own board instead of a rental. I quickly became overconfident, and trouble occured in the afternoon. During the morning we'd been on broad slopes with decent snow, but in the afternoon we moved up to the higher, narrower slopes which were icier. On the second or third run, I was near the right side of the trail, going too fast, when I saw two skiers ahead of me going very slowly. I looked to my left, planning to head that way, and there was a skier just coming up alongside me. I needed to slow down quickly, so I tried to zigzag back and forth in the narrow region between the edge of the slope and the skier to my left to reduce speed. Unfortunately, due to my inexperience, speed, and the conditions, I missed a cut, so my board kept going instead of turning.

I flew off the slope, went in between two trees that were 3 or 4 feet apart (hitting one with my forearm, we think), over a boulder, and miraculously landed in an 8x10 foot section of snow at the boulders base, surrounded by big hard boulders on all sides, without hitting any of them. My friends said it was quite a sight, looking over the slope at me in this little patch of snow with calamity on all sides. If I wasn't an atheist, my faith would have been confirmed, and as it was I had to invent deities of fortune so I had someone to thank.

The people who had been in my way (not that it would have been a problem if I had been going slower) yelled asking if I was alright. I yelled back "yes", then a few seconds later "uh, except my shoulder. I think I might need some help getting back up." There was something wrong in my shoulder, and I didn't think I could take my board off one-handed. The ski patrol came and helped me and asked me how I was and so forth. I was totally lucid and calm - when they didn't check me for shock symptoms, I asked my friends "Hey, how does my face look? Is it pale?" and so forth. They didn't think my shoulder was dislocated because I wasn't in enough pain, but that changed eventually. It didn't hurt a lot as they sledded me down the mountain and interviewed me, but it started to hurt as the car was found and we headed towards a poorly named "Urgent Care Clinic".

By the time we got there, the pain was much less bearable. They took off my shirt, the doctor took one look at my misshapen shoulder, and said "Its dislocated. Go to the emergency room". We did so. I walked into the emergency room (hunched over my distended shoulder), plunked my health insurance and drivers license cards down and said "I have a dislocated shoulder. Help me." They leisurely found some forms and asked for my name/address/SS#. I was in a lot of pain at this point, and rattled them off at "MicroMachines are brought to you by Galoob" speed. "Woah, slow down!", the nurse replied, and, like some weird cosmic test, I had to slowly and coherently recall strange personal information while in a lot of pain.

Eventually they got me into the ER, at which point they ignored me until I flagged down a passing doctor and begged for help. He promised morphine, and ages later it came, and they x-rayed me and set my shoulder and gave me opiates for home use and I was outta there. When the nurse had come with the morphine, I asked her "So, uh, will this make me addicted?" She told me no, and we talked about how much I'd have to have before that was a worry, and I was reassured. Similarly, with the opiates, I wanted to know how many I could take without danger, cuz it hurt a lot, so I went on the net and found out. I also found out that opiates are extremely addictive, although I would have to take them for a lot longer than I was planning to. The point is, I found out how many I could safely take and for how long I could safely use this drug, rather than just treating it as a magic pill. Quite a number of people (McCain's wife is a high-profile example) have become addicted to prescription painkillers due to careless use. Learn about the things you put into your body.

I treated this incident pretty seriously as a wake-up call. It helped me to realize that I have my sense of danger set a couple notches too low and my sense of adventure a couple notches too high. I don't think I am way over the line of sensibility (despite my moderately funky and unusual life), but I think I am over it. Its a matter of internal wiring and what strategies seem natural to me. Its easy to use "a little too aggressive" as a strategy because its a good local maxima - if you don't get unlucky (low probability but very negative utility events don't occur), you don't ever see the bad side, and you have slightly better results (in the broadest sense) than if you followed the "correct" strategies. Its a dangerously tempting but not-quite-right way to live life. It is especially tempting if you pass off those occasional serious problems or almost-problems as "just being unlucky", which is why I am not doing so. Extreme caution is necessary in potentially life-threatening situations because the possible negative payoffs are so large. I think that "dislocated shoulder only" was at the low range of injury possibilities, once I was airborne. I hope that I am succesful at using this insight to modify my strategies.

I was miserable for 2 1/2 weeks because I was either in pain or an opiate-induced haze, and then it got better. I started PT in mid-February, and with luck I will be able to start rock-climbing again sometime in May. Without luck, rock-climbing will no longer be in my range of possible activities (unless I can learn to do it one-handed). I am pretty bummed about this lack of rock-climbing in my life - it was something that I had only been doing for a few months, but had quickly become passionate and enthusiastic about. I will be very happy if it can again be a part of my life.

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