It started a few months ago…possibly May or June 2023, when I threw a towel at my husband. Overhead. As the towel flew, I felt a twinge in my right shoulder. It was familiar…ominous. Either I was panicking from the memory of my previous frozen left shoulder experience, or I had the eerie recognition of the condition I battled for several years since 2018 to around 2022. At the time I was told that there was a good chance that if you got one frozen shoulder, you would likely get it in the other shoulder at some point. I can remember fuzzily getting it on my right shoulder just as my left shoulder was easing. So how could this happen?
Long covid had done the impossible - taken away some of my most traumatic memories at the time. If it wasn’t for my blog, I wouldn’t have remembered half of it.
As time went on the pain gradually increased and changed. The spring of pain originated at the top of the shoulder and flowed like rivulets of intense pain sometimes down the forearm, other times burning through my bicep or shooting into my thumb. Then the freezing started. I knew I had to do something right away.
But first, I had to get a trip behind me. My father had recovered from his complicated heart bypass surgery and was now debilitated psychologically, living in fear and unable to move. I spent a few weeks with him, and accomplished my mission of getting him walking, driving and going to see his friends everyday at the local Club.
Once back I contacted my doctor to help me get the same hospital treatment I had the last time for my left shoulder-an ultrasound guided fluoroscopic shoulder injection. Amazingly, they turned me down and suggested I visit them at the doctor’s office where they would put another injection, not guided by any X-ray or ultrasound, into my shoulder. With my first frozen shoulder when I had a very kind and competent lady as my GP. She went though great lengths to help me, explained why it was important to have this injection in an operation theatre guided by equipment and fluoroscopy. This meant some delay, but after 3 years of suffering behind me, I was prepared to wait another month. That injection fixed my left shoulder. I don’t know if it was because I had already done the 3 year time that the condition demands, or whether the injection intervened and healed me.
Fast forward to this September, I had another GP who was not helpful at all. I was confused. It had been around 5-6 months since the right shoulder issue started. So I was at the start of the condition this time, unlike the previous time when it took 3 years to get some treatment. No help forthcoming, I grew increasingly desperate as the pain soared and the pile of pillows came back in my bed along with traumatic nights. I self-referred to physiotherapy at the hospital. I had 2 meetings with a physio who caused me so much pain during the examination manipulation that I screamed and cried through it. After the second session he referred me to a Consultant who agreed that the guided injection was the way forward. I was relieved one minute, then devastated the next when I found out that the hospital waiting list could extend to 6 months or more. I had to wait.
A few weeks into October, I woke up screaming one Saturday morning. As I stumbled to the bathroom attempting to calm my shoulder, I felt a wave of nausea and cold sweat. The sheer brutality of the pain caused me to faint. I crashed face down on some furniture and came to with cuts on my body and screaming hysterically and incoherently. This was according to The Husband and Tara who happened to be home that Saturday morning.
The decision was made. We would have to seek private treatment for the injection because I was desperate, and for the first time in decades, I admitted to it. I go in this Monday. Im not sure if it will work like before, but even if it gives me pain relief while the condition runs its course, I’ll take it. I am after all desperate.
No comments:
Post a Comment