The orthopedist didn’t mince words.

You have muscle tears in three places. There is compression in the shoulder and a bone spur that causes damage every time you raise your arm. Frankly, I’m surprised you’re able to use that arm at all. If you don’t correct the problem, you won’t be using it much longer.

Diagnosis: Arthoscopic surgery on the right shoulder; four to six weeks in a sling; two to three months of physical therapy. Prognosis: 70 to 80 percent use of the arm and shoulder after all is said and done — if I’m lucky.

A week ago, surgery was a final option. After more tests, it became the only choice. The doc wanted to operate on the arm next week but I have a full schedule for May and the high school sports season doesn’t end until the State Track Tournament in early June. After some debate, we settled on June 9.  I agreed to take it as easy as possible on the arm and shoulder to avoid further damage.

Apparently, the problem goes back more than that morning three months ago when I woke up with pain and numbness in my right arm. The bone spur has been wreaking havoc in the shoulder for a long time.

"You must be used to pain," he said.

Yeah, I am. Pain has been such a part of my daily regimen for so long, I’ve forgotten what it must be like to go through a day without it. Bad knees, a bum hip, calcium buildup from too many broken bones over the past 40 years — all add to difficulty in doing many of the things others take for granted. I can’t lift my left arm above my head because of a broken upper arm and dislocated shoulder some 20 years ago.

H.L. Mencken put it best:

If I had known I was going to live this long, I’d have taken a lot better care of myself.

In the past four years, more than a dozen local mothers have brought their teenaged daughters into my studio and asked that I shoot photos of the girl in a bikini, lingerie or partially nude for use in a "teen model web site."

Although I do occasionally shoot nude photographs of adults, I do not take such photos of children and, in each case, the girls brought in by their mothers were 14 or 15 or younger.

"Teen model" web sites feature underage girls in sexually-suggestive poses and revealing attire. Many charge "subscription fees" for access.

I tell the mothers to get the hell out of my studio and to not come back. When they leave I usually have to sit down and stop shaking. Such exploitation of children brings out blind rage.

I wrote about this problem some years ago for another web site. The story: Underage and Selling Their Sexuality on the Web brought a number of awards and calls for changes in the laws that allowed parents to give permission for their children to be exploited as sexual objects.

I’ve always wondered what in the hell these mothers were thinking when they sought to abuse their children in such a way. I’m also wondering what country singer Billy Ray Cyrus was thinking when he watched Vanity Fair photographer photograph his 15-year-old daughter, Miley Cyrus (above), topless and covered only by a sheet. With her tousled hair and sultry look, the 15-year-old appears to be in what the romance novels used to call as "post-coital" moment.

Miley, of course, is better known as Hannah Montana, a G-rated creation of the Disney Entertainment Factory, and an apparent role model for children her age. This "role model" told Vanity Fair that the steamy HBO series Sex And The City is her favorite TV show.

Shocked? Don’t be. It is now standard operating procedure for young girls to be used as sexual objects.  The trend is examined in the book: Girls Gone Skank: The Sexualization of Girls in American Culture.

Writes author Patrice A. Oppliger, an assistant professor of mass communications at Boston University:

Instead of advancing women’s social and professional empowerment, popular culture trends appear to be backsliding into the blatant sexual exploitation of women and girls at younger and younger ages.

This study investigates the effects of mass marketed sexual images and cultural trends on the behaviors and attitudes of young girls and describes many ways in which young girls are increasingly taught to go to outrageous lengths in seeking male attention.

Topics include the powerful effects of cultural phenomena such as revealing fashions, plastic surgery, and beauty pageants in influencing teen and preteen girls to willingly participate in and promote their own sexualization.

These chapters also explore other cultural factors contributing to this early sexualization of young girls, including absentee parenting and material overindulgence.

Later chapters focus on the sexual representations of females in the mass entertainment media, focusing specifically on how popular magazines, television programs, films, and the Internet prey upon, promote, and reinforce young girls’ physical and sexual insecurities. 

Some feel this is an urban problem but consider this:

1. Radford photographer Bob Shell is in prison for his part in the death of a young model in his downtown studio. Although the model, who specialized in bondage themes, was over 18, Shell also promoted teen model web sites and many of his photos were shot at his farm here in Floyd County;
2. In each case, the mother who brought her young daughter for "teen model" photographer, lived, at the time, in Floyd County.

(Photo of Miley Cyrus from Vanity Fair. Copyright 2008: Vanity Fair and Annie Leibowitz.  Book cover courtesy of Amazon.Com)

There they sat, writers all, in a circle in the back of the Floyd Country Store, reading to each other.

They were members of the the Southern Appalachian Writers Cooperative, a group that includes local blogger and writer Fred First, who organized this collective reading at the home of the Friday Night Jamboree.

Fred and Colleen Redman highlighted the event through their blogs but the audience for this performance was composed primarily of the writers’ themselves.

Over the past three months, doctors have offered various opinions and treatments for the mixture of pain, numbness and tingling inflicting my right arm: tendinitis, trapped nerves or just plain old age.

A long stint on the MRI table Tuesday brought a new diagnosis: a "through and through muscle tear" at the rotator cuff as the primary cause along with arthritis as a contributing factor and, of course, age.

In other words, a torn rotator cuff — or a variation.  Of course, this means bringing in an orthopedist and an evaluation on whether we can fix the thing through surgery, physical therapy, anti-inflammatory meds or that classic orthopedic standby: Cortisone.

Some years ago, I messed up the rotator cuff on my left arm and an orthepedist in Arlington promised to fix it. After he finished, I couldn’t raise my left arm above my head. Still can’t.

Amputation appears to be off the table — for the moment at least.

Good thing I’m left-handed.

Floyd is a quiet place after 9 p.m. on a weeknight. A few cars pass under the town’s only stoplight. A light remains on at Oddfellas Cantina as the staff cleans up after closing. A slight backup exists at the night depository at the Bank of Floyd as business owners drop off the day’s receipts.

I work late often and take a walk around town before heading home. Two pedestrians cross the street at Locust and Main. A deputy heads back from a call but the stop light often cycles through three our four reds and greens without any traffic.