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At Least I Know I Wasn't Making It Up
Sep. 15th, 2012 08:57 amI've had problems with my right shoulder for years - stiff, kind of achy, and I can't move my arm as far as I can my left. Best guess is it stems back to shortly after I graduated, and spent a few years doing surgery on a table set for a man about a food taller than me. It's annoying, but I've learned to work around it, and stretch, and manage the occasional flareup with ibuprofen, ice, and heat.
It started flaring up pretty badly a couple of weeks ago, this time involving both my neck and my shoulder, and getting bad enough that I couldn't turn my head to the right, and that the pain itself was getting in the way of concentration (or occasionally, getting in the way of doing anything but sitting on the sofa and crying). Ibuprofen, ice, heat, and massage weren't touching it. Changing my sleep posture helped for a day or so, but not much. But... it's just a stiff neck. I figured it was no big deal, and I was being a baby, and there was no way it was as bad as I thought it was. I'd just ride it out.
And yesterday my hand started going numb and cold. And that kind of freaked me out. So instead of going to a concert last night I went to the ER. One CT scan and a flabbergasted doc later (apparently they don't see injuries this severe outside of pro athletes and active military), I have a diagnosis. Severe narrowing of both the nerve channels and of the spine itself, due to a combination of disc bulging and actual bone changes in the spinal column (osteophytes for those who speak doctor; arthritis for those who don't).
So instead of concerts and SCA events and work and fun, I get to spend the next five days in a drug-induced haze. Vicodin, flexeril, and if those don't work, prednisone. And I have to get a Primary Care Physician so I can get a referral to a neurosurgeon - the hope is that I won't need anything beyond epidural steroid injections (which ooks me out enough on its own), but there's a small chance it might need surgery.
Meanwhile... did I mention drug-haze? I'm a featherweight when it comes to anything that 'may cause drowsiness.' I'm typing this *right* after taking meds, so they haven't fully kicked in yet, and already the world is running at about a two- second lag and everything is spinning slowly; I expect I'll be functioning a the mental level of a glazed carrot in about half an hour, and stay there for some time. With luck I'll still make it to the concerts - at least I don't need to think clearly to listen to pretty music. But conversation isn't likely to be my strong suit for a while.
I hope this works. Because the realization that some of this is permanent changes in teh bones of my neck is scaring the hell out of me. I don't want to just have to learn to live with this level of pain for the rest of my life....
It started flaring up pretty badly a couple of weeks ago, this time involving both my neck and my shoulder, and getting bad enough that I couldn't turn my head to the right, and that the pain itself was getting in the way of concentration (or occasionally, getting in the way of doing anything but sitting on the sofa and crying). Ibuprofen, ice, heat, and massage weren't touching it. Changing my sleep posture helped for a day or so, but not much. But... it's just a stiff neck. I figured it was no big deal, and I was being a baby, and there was no way it was as bad as I thought it was. I'd just ride it out.
And yesterday my hand started going numb and cold. And that kind of freaked me out. So instead of going to a concert last night I went to the ER. One CT scan and a flabbergasted doc later (apparently they don't see injuries this severe outside of pro athletes and active military), I have a diagnosis. Severe narrowing of both the nerve channels and of the spine itself, due to a combination of disc bulging and actual bone changes in the spinal column (osteophytes for those who speak doctor; arthritis for those who don't).
So instead of concerts and SCA events and work and fun, I get to spend the next five days in a drug-induced haze. Vicodin, flexeril, and if those don't work, prednisone. And I have to get a Primary Care Physician so I can get a referral to a neurosurgeon - the hope is that I won't need anything beyond epidural steroid injections (which ooks me out enough on its own), but there's a small chance it might need surgery.
Meanwhile... did I mention drug-haze? I'm a featherweight when it comes to anything that 'may cause drowsiness.' I'm typing this *right* after taking meds, so they haven't fully kicked in yet, and already the world is running at about a two- second lag and everything is spinning slowly; I expect I'll be functioning a the mental level of a glazed carrot in about half an hour, and stay there for some time. With luck I'll still make it to the concerts - at least I don't need to think clearly to listen to pretty music. But conversation isn't likely to be my strong suit for a while.
I hope this works. Because the realization that some of this is permanent changes in teh bones of my neck is scaring the hell out of me. I don't want to just have to learn to live with this level of pain for the rest of my life....
