Shoulder Update

[moon_custafer]

Citrus (my GP’s clinic) finally talked to the physiology clinic and claims they never advised me to get imaging done, so I went to Citrus this morning as a walk-in, saw a different doctor and now have a referral for x-rays/ultrasound of the shoulder, plus prescription NSAIDs and muscle relaxants. Now waiting to see if the latter work.

Comments

[sovay]

plus prescription NSAIDs and muscle relaxants. Now waiting to see if the latter work.

I hope they do.

[batwrangler]

Shoulder pain is awful. Best wishes!

[palain-7.livejournal.com]

Well this is all dreadful dreadfulness. I think you should be quite angry with these paper pushers who're extending your pain: even if you have to take an Anger Management course to do it! Even the Dalai Lama says that anger is a great source of energy (whilst qualifying that by saying that it also makes you do stupid things) and I find that pain is a great energy drain. For myself, muscular-skeleto pain doesn't have an emotional content, it's not upsetting, but it is a constant energy drain and vary irritating due to both the constant sensory distraction (Brain! Turn off those claxons! I know somethings busted!) and the usual accompanying lost of functionality somewhere (Stupid finger! Work!) .

Because I, and my brother for that matter, don't "act" pained we don't get taken seriously, even if there's considerable structure damage, unless we're pretty explicit about the levels of pain we're experiencing in relationship to something the medical people can relate to such as "somewhere between a hunk of plastic stuck in an eyeball and a broken arm". It's a difficult communication because pain and people's reactions to it vary so widely but I find it's essential. In your case perhaps the physio people didn't order more tests as you didn't seem 'pained' enough. "The squeaky wheel gets the oil" is a super important maxim in the medical world.

I"m no Jacky Chan but I've broken a lot of stuff. I find that getting as many alternating heating and freezing treatments, using hot water and bags of frozen corn or just cold water, as you can get into a day really help. A lot of the problem in these complicated gear boxes like the shoulder area is that something is bleeding a bit in there and then the blood dries out as little pieces of micro-gravel that gum up the super-fine clockwork in there and cause more pain and inflammation every time you move. The hot/cold cycles push blood into the injured area and then pull it out and this flushed the gravel out.

Whatever the treatment, especially physio, you do you have to keep at it religiously for a long time. This stuff doesn't heal very quickly once you're out of your thirties. Like, I smashed up my right index finger knuckle in March and it's been improving by about 1/2 a percent per day unless I bang it or yank the finger in which case there's a 10 percent penalty. Sometimes I think that the boredom and time taken up by the treatment and the concentration used up to keep at it is the worst part of injury.

Any little thing you do with your shoulder is going to damage it a bit, or at least increase the pain levels, and if you compensate with the other side somehow that can screw up the other side more than the injured side so I'd recommend being super wimpy about it as much as you can. Perhaps avoid hauling groceries around by taking the stores up on their "free home delivery for a month" as long as you don't have to commit to a longer deal.

Good luck. Keep us posted.