Things about Sam and Leslie

This is the story of how I ended up at Vandy, seeing a very nice doctor named Jennifer Halpern about a bump on my shoulder.

In late January of 2011, I looked in the mirror and saw a big bump on my shoulder.  It was right where I’d been hurting for going on two years at that point, right on the point of my right shoulder.  Once every month or two for the last couple of years, usually after some weight lifting or strenuous activity, my shoulder would hurt really badly for a few days.  But the bump was new to me.  I showed it to Leslie, and she agreed that it wasn’t just my terrible memory, the bump was new.

So we made an appointment with an Orthopedics doctor in Franklin named Dr. Cook, and saw him/them about a week later (there are two doctor Cooks in that office, they’re brothers and both Orthopedicists.)  They took some X-Rays of the shoulder bump, with the X-Ray lady making a disapproving noise when she saw my tattoo.

We waited around for the pictures to develop or whatever, then talked to one of the Cook’s about the X-Ray and what was up with my shoulder.  We mentioned that we were on some kind of short term supplemental insurance because I’d just switched jobs, so we wanted to avoid anything expensive like an MRI if possible.  He said that if I could live with it, then why not try some physical therapy.  So we did.

That lasted about six weeks, and at the end of it, my shoulder hurt a lot again for a few days.  The physical therapist looked at it and was like “WOAH that’s a huge bump!” and sent me back on to the Cooks.  They agreed that WOAh that’s a huge bump, and scheduled an MRI.  The results came back and they sent me on over to a fancy doctor at Vanderbilt.