Dislocated

This past weekend I had one of the most painful and frustrating experiences of my life. During our match against Trelleborgs I dislocated my shoulder for the second time. Dislocating your shoulder is a very painful injury for those lucky enough never to have experienced it, and I had been told that the first time is the most painful. Because, after your first dislocation, your shoulder joints have all been torn and stretched it is more likely to happen again. So when I felt my shoulder pop out in the 50th minute of the game this past weekend, it hurt, but I knew that the pain would last only so long. Usually, when I have an injury like this I'm rather easy to deal with. I may be in pain but I can make jokes and laugh with the doctors as we figure out what needs to be done. This time was no different. However, as the doctors on site were unable to fix my shoulder we had to call an ambulance. I figured it was no big deal as this happened last time. The paramedics will show up, give me some laughing gas and then pop the thing back in. But, to my dismay, the paramedics decided they needed to take me to the hospital. At this point 50 minutes had elapsed since the dislocation. I was beginning to struggle with the pain and my patience was already growing thin. I was relieved when I was finally given some morphine for the pain and muscle relaxers to aid in setting the shoulder in the ambulance. The relief lasted only minutes as the morphine had little effect other than to make me very dizzy, and the experience only got worse from there. The ambulance ride was 20 minutes long, over bumpy roads jolting my shoulder with increasing pain, I was unable to hold my head up or my eyes open, and the paramedic is interrogating me for every last shred of information on my life in Sweden.

When the ambulance ride mercifully ended, and I was finally in the care of the doctors, I figured the experience was over. But alas, they decided I needed more muscle relaxers before they could move my joint back into place. Another round of questions soon followed. They needed to know all my information from the U.S. as well. As I watched the time slowly tick by, and 4 nurses stood in the hallway gawking at my complete agony I decided that this was the single worst experience of my life. I have never been in more pain or been more frustrated. By the time I was finally put back together an hour and a half had elapsed, I had missed celebrating a good win with my teammates, and I had completely blown any opportunity to ask out the cute nurse when she saw me in tears in the hospital bed. I blame the morphine.

Although I was injured, the team put in a solid performance to preserve our 1-0 victory, that sees us move back up to 5th position. It was a good way to start the second half of our campaign.

One of the factors that contributed to our performance was our match against Dynamo Moscow a week and a half ago. Dynamo Moscow had been having their pre-season in Sweden and we played them in a friendly match right before they departed for Russia to begin their own season. We were lucky enough to play their full first team in the first half, which is made up of players who all represent their countries on the international level. This was a great experience for our team, because when you make mistakes against a quality opponent like Dynamo Moscow, they score… every time. After getting our butts kicked we took a boat from the island just off the coast where we played the match back to Ljungskile for a team dinner with everyone’s families. I wish that the day had been sunny enough to take pictures because being out on a boat on the Swedish coast is a stunning experience. The pictures below should give you an idea, they were taken by a small lake that is a short walk from our stadium

Also my game this saturday will be on TV here in Sweden. That means that you can watch a live stream online at 9 am central time. I don't have a link right now, but if you search wiziwig.tv at 9 you should be able to find one easily. I will be playing in the match Saturday, 7 days is more than enough time to recover my pride from crying in front of a cute nurse.

I'll have more to write about soon as Katie, Eddie, Mo, and Nel will be here to spend some time with me in 10 days! 

The Return

I’ll quickly acknowledge that it has taken me far too long to revitalize my blog and keep everyone up to date. Ok, since that is done and dusted, we can move on to the interesting stuff, like are Swedish meatballs in Sweden really better than those found at Ikea in Schaumburg? And do all Swedes drive Volvo’s and Saab’s?

As I can’t really get everyone up to speed on what has happened in my first 6 months here in Uddevalla, Sweden, I will provide a quick recap of how the season with Ljungskile SK has gone up to this point and promise to be a more reliable fountain of information for the remainder of my time here.

We had our first day back in training today after having a full week off for our mid-season break. I had planned to do some traveling over this week to Ireland, but due to some unforeseen complications with my bank here in Sweden I was unable to see this trip through. I had to settle for staying in Uddevalla for the holiday, which actually turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I nearly finished 3 books, was able to soak up a miniscule amount of sun (more on that in a minute) and indulged in a few Gin & Tonic’s, while listening to some blues every evening, and I refuse to complain about a vacation when I’m able to enjoy a few G&T’s. Shout out to Beth Hopkins for providing the Gin. My prior indulgence also failed to keep me from completing my fitness test in the proper time, so successful holiday indeed!

It was nice to get back to work today feeling refreshed and looking forward to the challenge that we face in the second half of our season. We are currently sitting on 20 points from 15 games, which, leaves us stuck in the middle of the pack in the Superettan. With some better luck with injuries I don’t think it’s unrealistic to think we could be sitting on at least 25 points. But what’s done is done and we have to focus on improving on our first half results. Which, I most certainly intend on doing.

As for life outside of football, I have had some difficulties adjusting to life in Sweden. Most of those problems are completely out my hands and it has taken me some time to realize this, but now that I have I think life will be much more smooth going forward. The weather certainly hasn’t helped either. I think in the past 4 weeks there has been maybe 7 sunny days? The rest of the time it has rained. A lot.

So in the interest of moving forward I am hoping that re-starting my blog will force me to explore my area a little bit more, that people will get in touch with me and ask me questions about life in Sweden so that I can learn new things if I do not know the answer, and I’m also hoping that writing the blog will help me hold myself accountable to learning Swedish.

To answer those burning questions from the beginning, Swedish meatballs are better in Sweden when I cook them, and Swede’s don’t show anymore of a preference for Saab’s and Volvo’s than anybody else.

Hej då!