April 10th, 2010
Myself, Brandon, Carrie and another guy who’s name I can’t remember went to do a four way star today. When we left the plan we were a bit unstable, it wasn’t too bad and it felt like we were going to correct it. I was trying to help by pushing Carrie away from me so she could get more belly down but she ended up whipping in the opposite direction. Because I was holding her grippers extra tight trying to push her away, when she twisted it dislocated my right shoulder instantly.
At this point I was pretty much in a lot of pain. I tried to pull my main but I couldn’t get my arm to grab the hacky so I pulled my reserve around 7k-6k feet. Under canopy now, I really had to push away the pain so I could steer towards the landing zone. At 1k feet, I unstowed my steering toggles so I could flare and have a softer landing because I knew I wasn’t going to be able to stand it. When I did it, I had bit of trouble pulling the toggle out on my right side which caused me to go in a bit of a low turn. While at first this was a bit scary, it was the best thing to have happened because it put me against the wind to land which really helped me in having a soft landing. Only problem is I couldn’t steer away from the concrete runway pullout. Landing was fairly soft so, landing on the concrete wasn’t too bad.
Within a couple minutes Brandon was over to my aid along with Carrie’s husband who was also filming us. Along with those two and Jack once he got there, they helped me get my rig off and I was then able to walk them through helping me putting my shoulder back in my socket.
In the end it was a great skydive because I’m still here. :D Just a hard lesson to have been learned on my end.
Went to the VA, X-ray’s didn’t show any broken bones. They gave me some Lortab but so far, it hasn’t helped with the pain. I just took two more, and if it’s still not helping I’ll just give them a call and hopefully get something a bit better.
I’m going to try and avoid the surgery route so I can skydive the rest of this season but we’ll see once the ortho doc’s give me a call and we find out how bad it really is from an MRI.
For those that are currious, here’s a video I found that is pretty close to what we were trying to do in the skydive. Unfortunately Brandon’s camcorder got turned off before the jump and didn’t get any of it on tape. :(
Here’s actual footage of me and Brandon on Friday doing a horny gorilla.
Awesome story, sorry about the shoulder. Would you say you pretty much blocked the pain mentally before landing, i figure its one of those life/death/race-against-time situations where you just don’t have time to think about it … did you feel it more after landing?
@Dimas Dude it was pretty intense. The freefall was no fun once it happened and being under canopy with a dislocated shoulder was painful as fuck. However I did do everything right, and I survived to do it again with the knowledge of how to avoid that incident. Skydiving is fun, and it’s safe. Things happen in any extracurricular sport you do, you can just as easily hurt yourself bouldering. If you haven’t skydived yet, I totally recommend it.
Intresting story indeed!Sorry about the shoulder.I want to ask you about the injury.You see,i have dilocated my shoulder three times in the past four years during bmxing,snowboarding,and baskeball.The doctor said that my shoulder is sensitive,so i did physiotherapy to engrength it.I recently did tadem free fall and bangy jumping and i didn’t felt any pain.But in the summer i want to take AFF courses.So i want your advise about that.Do you beleive that my shoulder will be a problem?When you injured your shoulder did you continue to do freefall?
@haris: I still skydive today, but because i’ve dislocated both of my shoulders a ADD (Automatic deployment device) is required for me to jump. What these gems do is, if you’re falling at X speed around Y altitude, it will cut your reserve cord and deploy the reserve for you.
As far as everyday freefall, i can feel the forces from falling on my shoulder at the end of the day. Sometimes it can be painful, others not. I feel it more in the shoulder describe in this story, where as my other shoulder has had two surgeries and doesn’t bother me as much anymore. It wont be a problem, just something you will need to be aware of. Just remember this rule when jumping with a group of people and working on docking maneuvers, if the formation goes to shit OR is going to shit, let go and regroup. It’s not work saving.
Thanks a lot!!!