Make that a trilogy...

Well, everyone, I have surgery again in two weeks.

Surgery to take the pins and wires out of my shoulder.
The pins and wires that are moving around and causing a lot of problems and pain.
The pins and wires that probably should never have been there in the first place.

Interesting, right? Yeah. I sure thought so.

After bouncing around Nairobi for the past few days, getting opinions from different doctors, I let an American at AIM’s Kijabe Hospital cast the deciding vote. He says he wouldn’t have done the surgery in the first place—“not even on a Major League pitcher”—because it’s not worth it. Imagine those words hitting your ears after you’ve spent more than half of your yearly income on flights and accommodation and medicines and appointments and the like for this dumb thing.

I confess I didn’t take it well. I ended up leaning against a tree trunk in a small, out-of-the-way graveyard outside the hospital, all alone, crying—sobbing, really—and dialing Lara’s number, though it was 1 a.m. there. Definitely one of my shining moments in Africa.

But, that’s that. I won’t go into all the details, but I guess there are different approaches to fixing a separated shoulder, and I just happened to get the guy who thought this was best and gave me some not-exactly-accurate information. And then he had absolutely ridiculous ideas to fix the problem. Something akin to whacking the protruding pins back in with a rubber mallet. (Not exactly that, but close.)

But, bygones. It’s all out of my hands now, and it could be that things are simple from here. I just have to endure the pain for another two weeks, then I’ll be in in the morning and out in the afternoon up at Kijabe. And hopefully not on any more detours to my healing and blooming MLB career.

Until then, I’m going to team up with the On Field Media team early, Lord willing, so at least I’ll be of some use while I’m forced to stay in this city.