Remember when I said my chronic conditions kick my butt for a couple of weeks now and then? Well, this time it was my shoulder. The good news is that it wasn’t the usual excruciating pain I became accustomed to living with, but surgery recovery instead.
Yes! I finally beat the system; I WON the healthcare lottery. I received the surgery on my shoulder I have been needing badly for 3+ YEARS, by way of THE best expert surgeon for this injury. Words cannot express how blessed and relieved I feel that that part is over. At any rate, this particular affliction is called Scapular Dyskinesis, and you can read more about that here.
I wish I had asked my surgeon to take a before photo during the exam so I could show you what my situation looked like. I can assure you it was similar to the above picture, and equally unsettling in appearance, if not worse. I suppose I was focused solely on being heard, and wondering if my time was being wasted again (yay western medicine…). It wasn’t. I finally found the right clinic, and the right doc to fix my shoulder.
Many sources I came across during my research insist that physical therapy is the answer for this injury. Not always…it depends on the cause, and the extent and type of damage. I respect medical professionals that try to keep their patients out of the operating room, because surgery is invasive and complicated, and the recovery really sucks. The truth is, though, many cases require surgery, particularly ones with muscle detachment. If your muscles are detached, no amount of physical therapy will take until you get them reattached.
I know this from experience. We’re talking years of increasing pain, dysfunction, accumulating secondary conditions like occipital neuralgia, and eventually, secondary injuries such as labral tears. All of that suffering despite several attempts at conservative treatments. In the end, it took the right pair of eyes, and the right expertise, to finally heal correctly.
Anyway, I’m about eight weeks post-op, with my minor surgical complications resolved and physical therapy well underway, I finally feel able to return to writing. This topic will be my focus for a while, which will be broken up into weekly segments, as it is a long story. All the same, it is an account worth telling, not only for myself, but also in the off-chance of helping someone else.
Musecal Mind 