Please forgive me for this

[sigma7]

So I saw that San Francisco 49ers quarterback Alex Smith is out of today's game with "a third-degree shoulder separation." Which got me to wondering about the varying levels of severity of a shoulder separation. It turns out there are six different types, from Type I to Type VI, in increasing levels of damage and resultant treatment.

In other words, as I was hoping, there are six degrees of shoulder separation.

Comments

[rewil.livejournal.com]

That is a beautiful and groanworthy thing.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh...geez...that's just wrong...

...but i'm laughing at it, so, it cant be all that bad, right?

[wenchamok.livejournal.com]

For other random medical knowledge, there are nine degrees of burns (corresponding to the nine circles in Dante's Inferno, perhaps?), with the ninth being complete cremation. You just don't hear about degrees four through nine because they're almost always fatal.