Wednesday 15 August 2018

So Much Ow

I hurt my shoulder.

But not my shoulder.  Like my entire upper arm/shoulder area?  Sometimes down to the elbow, I don't even know?

And uh, yeah, I hurt it like... well, a while ago.  As in, for sure last Fall.  Ahem.

I have no idea what I did.  I just know that it started being restricted in range of motion and I was working with a trainer at the time so we just tried to avoid things and adapt but I didn't really know what, if anything had happened (there was no injury or moment of OW or anything I noticed or recalled) so I didn't ... know what to do or not to do.

And it got... uh... bad.

Like, unable to sleep on that side.  Or even lie on it for a minute.  Unable to use it for, say, pushing up off the couch.  Extreme pain when I used it accidentally (like catching my phone when it slipped out of my hand).  As in, I would be crying from the pain and unable to move kind of pain.  Yeah, it was bad.

But RIGHT around that same time my doctor retired.  Which is my excuse for not going in to talk to my doctor about it.  (The doctor saga is a whole other story but has pretty much resolved it just... sucked for a while in terms of any care.)  I did talk to my massage person and the trainer/phsyio person but I also have to admit I just kind of left it and hoped it would get better.

Well, it did and it didn't.  And for the last few months my massage person has been saying that I need to get my doctor to refer me to a specialist because it hasn't resolved.  And, well, I didn't.  But I did go see a physiotherapist.  Who wants me to get an ultrasound done to make sure there's nothing really not good going on.  So I'm waiting for that to happen.

And then I remembered another not-physio type person I went to ages ago and so long story kind of short I'm finally seeing some progress.

I can lie on that side now.  Sometimes.  For a few.  I can roll over in bed without pain.  I can lie on my left side without pain (I had to prop the right up on a pillow for a while to be on that side)  I wake up without pain (I had to have an extra pillow around in bed for when I woke up as the arm would be in extreme pain upon wakeup.)  It's still hard to put my hair up in a ponytail but I'm now able to put my bra on again (knock on wood.... there was a while where it would bring me to tears... or I had to do it up really weirdly and then adjust it... no kidding.) I have no real idea how I let it get so bad except to say I was very much distracted with things I haven't talked about here and I kept just hoping it would get better.

The Dr (he's a doctor of Chinese medicine and we call him "Dr Magic" because he is) says that he thinks a lot of what I'm dealing with now is the results of not having dealt with it oh, say, nine months ago.  And that the area needs circulation to come back and blood flow and to reduce inflammation and get the range of motion back and he says it's similar to a frozen shoulder in some ways.  But having had that for a time many years ago I can say it's not actually similar in any ways I can tell.  Perhaps just in the restricted motion.

Dr Magic says that if anything in your body isn't healing or healed within two weeks that's when it's time to see a doctor; that the body wants to heal and things shouldn't take more than about two weeks.

So... you know... not eight months.  Or seven.  Or even six.  Ok?

Ok.

And I keep on being reminded that nothing in the body "goes wrong" in isolation.  Because as we work on readjusting things to how they should be (ribs were out, pulled "out" by the contracted muscle which was pulled by the etc etc) something else gets irritated and suddenly my leg is sore because my shoulder is getting better.  You know?

The leg bone's connected to the... thigh bone, and all that.

But man oh man have I ever missed sleeping and lying on my right side.  I learned this last few months that it's my absolute go to for comfort and relaxing.  Come back to me right side, I miss you so!

2 comments:

Jason Langlois said...

I sometimes think one of the harder things about being an adult is remembering to look after ourselves. Particularly as our body parts slowly go out-of-warranty and end up needing repair.

I know it's obvious, but look after yourself.

Victoria said...

It's very true. :/