Top Gun Pilot

A candidate for Top Gun Pilot goes up in his airplane during the first day of training and decides to mimic Tom Cruise’s famous scene by flying the airplane upside down. Unfortunately, he has forgotten to fasten his seat belt properly and feels gravity pulling him out of the airplane. At the last moment he ejects with sufficient elevation to deploy his parachute 70-80%.

Our Top Gun candidate manages to snag a branch momentarily to break his fall a bit, but his momentum splits the branch and carries him down hard to the ground. He survives this accident. But that evening, while awaiting to hear from the review board regarding any repercussion of his stunt, our Top Gun candidate slips in the shower. As his body slumps forward, he manages to extend one arm back and grab the shower head. He feels a sharp pain in his shoulder prior to landing on the shower stall tile. And he notices that the “ball of his arm bone” is no longer in its proper place. A fellow trainee at the next stall tells him he has separated his shoulder previously, and that he knows how to fix it.

The fellow trainee begins to pull on his arm, but the pain increases and eventually, his arm goes limp - the pilot cannot raise it any more. The fellow trainee then says they should go to the emergency room for repairs after all and calls him an Uber. (The fellow trainee chose not to accompany the pilot candidate because he was due at the Top Gun bar to meet Kelly McGillis who was re-enacting the scene where Tom Cruise sings “You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feeling”.) The pilot endures excruciating pain until the resident at the ER puts the shoulder back in place; She simply recreates the injury and the head of the humerus slips back into place. Ironically, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers “Free Falling” song was playing in the background while the resident fixed the shoulder separation. Which labeled nerve is most at risk in these types of injuries?