i went to the doctor today to see about my sore shoulder.
after taking down a little history of the problem, he poked and prodded my shoulder, lifted and lowered my arm, and had me perform a variety of twists and turns to test my range of motion.
in the end, he decided that i was suffering from adhesive capsulitis, or “frozen shoulder”. he noted that this condition was generally found in sedentary smokers. (while i may be somewhat sedentary (alright — maybe a lot sedentary), i’m not a smoker.) it can be found in anyone, though, and nobody really knows what causes it. (more articles on it can be found here, here, here, here, here and here.)
the most troubling fact to emerge from the research i’ve done is that the condition generally lasts a year or more (average recovery time is eighteen months). this is alarming.
let me be blunt: i am in a hell of a lot of pain. i can’t imagine being in this much pain for a year.
what can be done?
to start with, the doctor gave me a cortisone injection. in theory, this should relieve the inflammation in the shoulder. (in actuality, it’s just made the shoulder sorer, at least during these first few hours after the injection.)
he also upped my hydrocodone dosage from “one or two before bed” to “once every four hours”. and he gave me a stronger anti-inflammatory.
in the long-term, once the pain has been arrested, i’m too start a course of physical therapy. (actually, the doctor seemed a tad miffed that i was unable to lift my arm twenty minutes after he gave me the cortisone injection. sorry, doc. i gave it my best.)
i know all this talk about my ailment is wearisome. believe me: it’s even more wearisome to me. i get to look forward to another night of sleeping on the recliner in front of the tv, tossing and turning, waking every hour or two because of the pain, surfing through the endless sea of informercials and three’s company reruns.
I had Adhesive Capsulitis 12 years ago in my left shoulder. Now I have it again in my right. I’m hoping to find a group of people who might want to start a chat room or bulletin board… gotta do something besides watching those reruns…
Let me know…