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....as I know most of the people reading this have chronic pain issues worse than mine. The trouble with Silk’s Ring Theory/"Comfort In, Dump Out" is that it supposes there’s only one seriously-ill person in the situation, or at least one who has the worst issues and everyone else is in orbits of diminishing pain around that person.
For two months or so I’ve had a pain in my shoulder that’s been getting gradually worse and extending down my arm. My GP said rotator-cuff injury and told me to go see a physio, the physio (about a week-and-a-half ago) says rotator cuff but also inflamed shoulder joint and to ask my GP to make an imaging appointment so we can get more info on what’s causing it, and my GP’s office took my request (last Friday) and fell silent until two days ago when I asked if they’d had any success making the appointment, at which point I was told they needed to see the notes taken by the physio and couldn’t do so until I signed a form okaying them to talk to each other. I realize that patient confidentiality is important, but since in this case I was the one asking them to talk to each other, you’d think my email would be sufficient to prove I was ok with them doing the thing I’d asked them to do in the first place. However, I printed out, signed, scanned and returned the form, and since then—no word. I guess I’d better nudge them again.
Meanwhile Andrew is mad at our GP on my behalf, which doesn’t actually help; it just makes for another thing I have to calm him down about/distract him from. It’s be easier if he didn’t have to know about my shoulder at all, but it’s past the point where I can conceal it. I can make it into work, and do the things they ask of me, but it’s really getting hard to focus. Rubbing on liniment-type stuff every hour helps a little, painkillers don’t do anything, a heating pad helps very temporarily but tends to make the joint feel worse afterwards. I’m hoping this is the sort of thing that can be fixed with a shot of cortisol, like they once gave Andrew at the hospital for his toe, but I don’t know how to get to the point where someone’s willing to do that. I’m beginning to think I’d have been better off going to a hospital emergency department, except that I don’t feel like this is catastrophic enough to justify doing so.
Which is another frustrating thing-- I don’t even really know how much pain this actually is – I’ve never broken a bone, had a heart attack, or given birth, so I don’t know how other people’s 1-10 pain scales are calibrated. I know it feels like the same level of pain as the migraines I’ve had, only in my shoulder and arm, only worse because it never stops. I am also aware that my GP’s foot-dragging may be a gender/age thing – lord knows all the times I’ve had to take Andrew to Emergency he got seen quickly but at the same time the staff tended to assume it was cardiac-related regardless of his actual symptoms, which was a different kind of frustration—but “suspecting gender discrimination” is hard to translate to “getting it fixed.”
For two months or so I’ve had a pain in my shoulder that’s been getting gradually worse and extending down my arm. My GP said rotator-cuff injury and told me to go see a physio, the physio (about a week-and-a-half ago) says rotator cuff but also inflamed shoulder joint and to ask my GP to make an imaging appointment so we can get more info on what’s causing it, and my GP’s office took my request (last Friday) and fell silent until two days ago when I asked if they’d had any success making the appointment, at which point I was told they needed to see the notes taken by the physio and couldn’t do so until I signed a form okaying them to talk to each other. I realize that patient confidentiality is important, but since in this case I was the one asking them to talk to each other, you’d think my email would be sufficient to prove I was ok with them doing the thing I’d asked them to do in the first place. However, I printed out, signed, scanned and returned the form, and since then—no word. I guess I’d better nudge them again.
Meanwhile Andrew is mad at our GP on my behalf, which doesn’t actually help; it just makes for another thing I have to calm him down about/distract him from. It’s be easier if he didn’t have to know about my shoulder at all, but it’s past the point where I can conceal it. I can make it into work, and do the things they ask of me, but it’s really getting hard to focus. Rubbing on liniment-type stuff every hour helps a little, painkillers don’t do anything, a heating pad helps very temporarily but tends to make the joint feel worse afterwards. I’m hoping this is the sort of thing that can be fixed with a shot of cortisol, like they once gave Andrew at the hospital for his toe, but I don’t know how to get to the point where someone’s willing to do that. I’m beginning to think I’d have been better off going to a hospital emergency department, except that I don’t feel like this is catastrophic enough to justify doing so.
Which is another frustrating thing-- I don’t even really know how much pain this actually is – I’ve never broken a bone, had a heart attack, or given birth, so I don’t know how other people’s 1-10 pain scales are calibrated. I know it feels like the same level of pain as the migraines I’ve had, only in my shoulder and arm, only worse because it never stops. I am also aware that my GP’s foot-dragging may be a gender/age thing – lord knows all the times I’ve had to take Andrew to Emergency he got seen quickly but at the same time the staff tended to assume it was cardiac-related regardless of his actual symptoms, which was a different kind of frustration—but “suspecting gender discrimination” is hard to translate to “getting it fixed.”
