On August 18, I went out of work due to a buildup of injuries to my right shoulder, and on August 26, I underwent a two and a half hour procedure to repair the injuries.  As a result, I have spent the better part of a month and a half in my apartment, in a sling, bored out of my mind.  So how have I survived without building up an urge to strangle passersby?  Here’s how I did it, and you can too!

There are several critical components to not go insane while one of your arms is restricted.

- Learn how to type one-handed.  Sure, you’ll be slow and it’ll be hard and frustrating to type one-handed.  I’m typing this article one-handed and it’s going rather well.  There will be random misspellings and your hand will get tired, sure, but it means you get to participate on the internet, especially on forums such as the ones on our very site!

- Sleep a lot.  This is a lot more complicated than you can imagine.  I tend to toss and turn in my sleep, so if I was going to roll onto my elbow and shoulder, it was going to be rather painful.  The solution was to have a barrier made out of pillows or blankets or what have you built up on the injured side, so that way, if I tried to roll onto that, it would be impossible.  It also made my bed even more comfortable than it is already, so for the first few days post-surgery, I slept around 18 hours a day.  This made my doctor extremely happy because I wasn’t doing anything stupid.

- Play video games.  This may seem like the slacker’s thing to do, but when your shoulder is injured, you need to do something with your hand to keep the muscles from atrophing.  Playing video games actually keeps your hand and forearm muscles active, thus making your recovery time quicker because you don’t have to rebuild those muscles, just your bicep and shoulder muscles.

- Have a healthy imagination.  This really helps pass the time.  Nothing says timewaster like daydreaming about random things, and subjecting your friends to bizarre text messages, such as taking a poll about who would win in a fight between Dr Pepper and Mr. Pibb.  (In case you were curious, I voted for Mr. Pibb, as the dude took steroids to become Pibb Xtra and that gave him a competitive advantage.)

- Don’t let yourself be worried about your recovery.  Oh, sure, there will be moments when you get upset because you can’t drive or you can’t participate in Wii Bowling, but at least everything is fixed up and you’re on the road to recovery.  I have a little countdown of when I return to work.  I never really thought I’d be excited about that, but hey, you’ve got to have something to look forward to.

Of course, having guests over helps, as does watching a lot of DVDs and on demand programming, but anyone can tell you how to do that.  Then again, I wouldn’t exactly recommend injuring your shoulder to anyone either!  But if you have any questions about how to handle this, then head on over to our forums and I’ll answer any question you may have!

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