Ah, me, it’s my own stupid fault –

Jan. 5, 2012, Thursday


It looks like I’m probably going to have arthroscopic surgery on my right shoulder.

Let me take you back to June, 2011, for the stupid part. I was walking Baxter and Kasey. Kasey is Nan’s not-so-new-now dog, and we (John & I) were dog sitting. Normally I do not like or use a retractable leash, but for some reason, that stupid day I was.

It’s not clear to me now why Kasey lunged, but he jerked my right arm and shoulder around. Big deal. Not the first time I’ve been jerked around. Later that day I was trying to fix the table next to John’s chair. The legs have grooves and the two shelves slide into the grooves…and occasionally work their way out of them, which means the table will fall down. Of course I was trying to fix it without taking anything off the table; John didn’t understand what I was trying to do, the recumbent bike with its ton-and-a-half front wheel was in the way…and by then I was mad. I think I tried to drag the bike to one side with my right arm, which had already been strained by the dog and trying to manipulate the table without help…

So while I didn’t really notice anything in the heat of my immaturity, later on I thought…OW!

Gee, my right collar bone seemed to be bulging, it was red, and really sore. Of course, I ignored it, except for some cold compresses and/or hot, and/or ibuprofen. I don’t remember now how long I waited before I finally went to a doctor of internal medicine—because I kept thinking it would go away, but finally I wondered if maybe I had fractured my clavicle.

Doc took an x-ray; no, it wasn’t broken. Tissue/tendons are probably just inflamed; keep doing what I was doing; come back if it didn’t get better.

So….5 months later, the clavicle itself wasn’t sore or red, but it had never flattened out again…and by then I was having pain in my right shoulder and down my arm if I moved it “wrong,” and mobility was becoming limited.

Went back to the doc. Nah, it’s not broken, but I might have inflammation in the shoulder joint. I don’t think he thought there was a connection between clavicle and shoulder, but I KNEW there was. Still…he prescribed Medrol. Pain lessened, even though mobility didn’t improve. Took a second round since pain wasn’t quite all gone. Yeah, it helped…for a short time.

Takes me awhile but I finally thought, OK, something is going on. Maybe I should go to an actual bone doctor and see what a specialist has to say.

Saw the orthopedic surgeon a couple of days after Christmas. He had some long name for the clavicle, which is not broken, but it IS dislocated. He said he could push it back into place, but it would just pop out again. It wouldn’t hurt anything being like it was.

OK, fine, said I, but what about the pain in my shoulder. I’m sure they’re connected.

Don’t ya love doctors. He got up and pressed my shoulder back and –something else I don’t remember, because at the point I yelled, OW!

Oh, he says, you may have a tear in there…he didn’t say rotator cuff, and I don’t remember now what. Here I’m always telling people to take a little voice recorder with them to record what the doctor says, and I had mine in my purse…and didn’t use it.

Be that as it may, he then wanted me to have an MRI with contrast. Which I had done today. And you just try to get the same story from different people. Doc said they’ll give you the films/CD before you leave; make another appt with me then and bring them. Imaging place said they’d send them to the doc. Well, I won’t go into all that—suffice it to say they gave me the films and CD before I left today.

Imaging place also kept saying “arthrogram” instead of MRI. Turns out injecting the contrast is the arthrogram—although when that word first came up and I googled it, the procedure described wasn’t really accurate—at least not compared to what I had. And then even though my appt was scheduled for 1 pm today, somewhere in there the doc who did the procedure had been called out to an emergency, so it was after 2:30 before they called me back.

However, since I had befriended Macy at the front counter, she took me aside, explained and apologized about the extended wait, gave me a gift card for Jack-in-the-Box, suggested I go eat, be back by around 2:30. So I did. Only when I saw the Jack card, I thought "McDonald's" and went there, which just proves that sometimes sound gets lost in the translation between ears and brain. I still brought back cookies for the group.

A short while after I got back to the waiting room, here came one fellow, took me to the undressing room, where they also give you a little locker & the key to it, where you leave your clothes & purse—if you happen to be a woman. Long cloth gown and paper shorts are the fashion of the moment.

Nurse/assistant/tech came and got me. Doc came in, explained what he was going to do.
I was lying there with my shoulder exposed, he slathered it with alcohol, then covered it with plastic! Meanwhile there’s this camera? thing hovering over me, and I glance to my left and see a monitor screen –and there’s my shoulder …just the lovely bones. I guess they call that camera/x-ray a fluoroscope. Cool! I watched in real time as the doc inserted a longggg needle with numbing agent into or near the shoulder joint. It was uncomfortable, but really not bad. Then he came back with another longggg needle—and I saw the “dye” squirt into the area. Cool!

I had been told it would take about 30 minutes for the dye to spread, but the nurse had me move my arm 4 ways—and the dye was all spread out. Took about 2 minutes. When I sat up, there was a big reddish-brown stain on the sheet where my shoulder had been. I don’t know if it was blood or dye…I hope it was dye! Or antiseptic. Doc slathered my shoulder with more alcohol after he was done.

Nurse walked me down to the MRI room. Connie ran the machine; took about 20 minutes for that—after she wrapped some kind of padding around the shoulder area to immobilize it. I wonder if this was what is called an “open” MRI. When I had an MRI after a concussion, it was a much bigger unit and a much smaller tube. This one felt almost airy—doesn’t bother me either way.

The thing with MRIs is they are soooo noisy—and they make a variety of sounds. First I was inside a water pik, and construction site, and who knows where else. I asked Connie about that and she said the different sound waves affect the tissues in different ways, which gives different images. Oh, and in case you haven’t figured it out, the dye is also supposed to give a better image.

Yeah—I looked at some of those MRI images. Ain’t no way anyone can see anything or figure out anything. They just pretend. Ha.

Anyway, I have an appointment with the ortho doc on Monday. After he sees the images, he’s supposed to be able to tell me what’s going on and if I’ll need surgery. And That will be a whole ‘nuther story.