After a rough year in 2008, this year proceeded to get worse.
When I last posted in January, I had hoped to return to normal life, and I came close for a while. From January to late April I was very busy with my full time job, teaching a bunch of classes at the gym and actively working on a new quilt art piece to submit to some shows.
In late April, I went for a diagnostic test – an MRI with arthrogram. An arthrogram is where they inject a contrast agent (dye) into the joint capsule. For certain types of injuries this supposedly provides for better imaging on the MRI. The doctor ordered the same test for both shoulders. The reason was we suspected the left had the same injury as the right had repaired last year, but the right never fully recovered so the test was ordered for both, to see what could be learned.
The left test went smoothly and indeed showed that I did have a rather large cartilage (labral) tear on the left shoulder. The right test was executed with much difficulty, requiring many needle stabs against the bone (by 2 different doctors) to try to get the dye into the capsule.
The following morning I could not move the right arm….at all. AT ALL! I could not get in to see the doctors. They told me it “was in my head” and that that the “type of symptom you are telling us doesn’t happen.” The doctors would not see me but encouraged me to visit the ER, where I sat around for several hours with a slew of other people that appeared to be using the ER as a surrogate doctors office. Many hours later I was discharged without the ER doing anything and having never seen a doctor (as I had been promised) as my ortho surgeon had called in a MedPac script (steroid) to treat me for inflammation.
After 11 days passed, my arm was engorged and I made my 2nd pilgrimage to the ED. This time they took notice…wouldn’t you with a huge swollen arm that had red tracks streaking out. They treated me for cellulitis and put me on IV antibiotics. But here is the kicker….for around 14 hours I could not get anyone in ED to believe me that the shoulder was the root cause. Finally someone performed a test that I asked for and then we were on to something. I had septic shoulder infection…..so badly that they did emergency middle of the night surgery to open and flush the joint. I spent 4 days in the hospital and another 4 weeks on IV antibiotics every 8 hours. Luckily I could administer those myself and was able to return to work.
I had about a month in between the infection and the left shoulder repair where I was able to do some painting, but not quilting. Then I had the left shoulder repaired, and all seems to be going well with it.
So…..despite all this, missing a slew of submission deadlines and being unable to complete art work that I had been actively engaged in for months…I am optimistic.
I hope to have enough shoulder function in September to start some work again. I hope to have a productive fall, with at least a few months of quilting and art work before they go back into the right shoulder to figure out what is still wrong with it.
