Quick Health update. So, during the first few months of 2022 my left shoulder started acting very weird. It was very difficult for me to reach upward. It’s as if the muscle would just stop working. Of course my first reaction was, ”Really? F%CK! and Here we go again!” After I was able to work through the feelings of anger, sadness, and fear I made an appointment with my orthopedic surgeon, Michael Wiater, who had originally replaced my elbows a few years ago; he is the shoulder expert in the area — so I knew I would be in great hands (literally) if necessary. 🙂
Luckily, the examination and x-rays of both shoulders revealed that there was nothing urgent or extreme to worry about. He saw some degeneration, which was expected, but there was still plenty of joint space. What a huge relief! He thought it was probably bursitis and wrote a script for physical therapy. After about six weeks of PT I was pretty much back to my “normal” again.
During the visit, he also X-ray’d my elbows just to make sure they were doing well. He was very concerned about my right elbow. To him it looked as if it was a loose again. I left that appointment in tears; I could feel the post-traumatic-stress from the second elbow revision in 2020 rising inside of me; knowing darn well the third attempt had an extremely narrow margin of working out favorably.
That afternoon, my mom was visiting. We were standing in the kitchen and I was crying explaining to her what doctor Michael had said. As I looked out the kitchen window, there was a fluffy read Cardinal sitting in the tree right in front of me. He was the only bird there and I knew it was a sign from my Grandma Millie comforting and reassuring me that everything would be just fine.
Those feelings stayed with me until I was able to follow up with his brother Brett Wiater, the surgeon that had revised my elbow. He compared the x-rays to my most recent films and assured me that everything was fine. This time, I cried tears of joy on the way home! Thank you grandma Millie for watching over me!
Also during this time I thought I would see if there was anything available to help my right hand. My rheumatologist has consistently said there’s not much they can do for it surgically, however, we agreed that occupational therapy might we worth a try. While Physical Therapy works on gross motor skills; Occupational Therapy works with the smaller muscles, for fine motor skills. I only went for a few times, as it soon became apparent there was not much they could do either. So, I guess I am stuck (literally) with this hand.
As you can see, there is very little joint space anywhere and my wrist just looks like one giant fused ball of bone. You can understand why fine motor skills have become increasingly difficult.
I’m trying to use voice text these days as much as possible. But that’s a whole nother animal…
(And yes, nother is a real word which functions similar to another and its use traces back to the early 14th century)
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