Today I watched a documentary about common medical procedures. I’m not sure why I watched it, but it happened to be on the television when I was eating dinner, and I figured I would take the time to learn something new. The main section of the documentary I watched was about shoulders, and all the different types of problems that can occur. Many of them are to do with age, or just general sports injury. For example, there is this type of procedure called a shoulder joint replacement surgery, which apparently literally thousands of people have to get done every year.

I guess it really speaks to the quality of our bones when you take that number into consideration. However, even that number is still nothing compared to the hundreds of thousands who receive knee and hip replacement surgery. Apparently most people only get shoulder surgery when nonsurgical treatments like medication and activity are no longer helpful. I can’t imagine how much pain someone must be in to get to that point.

I’ve walked past this shoulder surgeon located in Melbourne a couple of times and have seen people walking out with their arms in slings. I wonder what caused their injuries and what their recovery is going to look like. For some people, it can take many months of physical therapy, but for others it can be a lot quicker. It depends. I guess that’s true for everything.

In the documentary, I learned all about exactly what a shoulder replacement surgery involves. It’s where the damaged parts of the shoulder get removed and are then replaced with artificial ones, called a prosthesis. A lot of the people who get them done are dealing with some pretty serious symptoms, like intense shoulder pain while doing normal activities, and even an inability to sleep due to there being pain while resting. It just goes to show that we really should look after our shoulders properly!