I’ve been dealing with intermittent pain and motion restriction in my left shoulder since September. Then in November, it turned the corner from intermittent to regular and it impacted my life enough that I finally sought medical help. As a result of that consultation, I was dignosed with a couple muscle impingements and prescribed physical therapy. As of New Year’s Eve, I’d had five sessions and I was already improving.
Nothing wild happened for us on NYE. My wife and I went out for a nice Mexican dinner at the restaurant where we got married back in 2018, then went home and watched TV until midnight, split a bottle of champagne, watched our neighbors’ fireworks display, kissed each other silly, then went to bed. Well, she went to bed, I went to my office and finished the Claire Kingsley novel I’d been devouring off and on all day. Close to the 3AM, I finished Hidden Miles and hit the hay.
Enough scene setting, on with it, you hack!
I woke up at 6:30 AM on Wednesday, January 1, 2025, and my left arm felt like – I don’t know what. I woke up crying and in so much fucking pain I screamed into my pillow. I had throbbing pain between my shoulder and elbow averaging eight (of ten) on the pain scale. Then, to make matters worse, I’d lost most of the feeling in my fingers and had shooting pains of eight to ten on the pain scale running up and down from my elbow to my hand. Thankfully, it wasn’t constant, the shooting pains, but it happened often enough and were so intense it took everything for me not to scream or pass out – or both.
We tried everything to mitigate the pain. Tylenol and aspirin, of course. Ice packs and the heating pad? Yep. Tried a scalding hot shower, but it had no impact. I even took a Tramadol – which is a synthetic opioid – with little effect except to make me sleepy and dizzy in equal measure. Nothing worked.
Finally, my wife drove me to the nearest ED; where I winced and whimpered through triage and then waited over three hours for a physician to see me. He said he couldn’t fix whatever was happening without soft tissue imaging – an MRI, which he couldn’t order – but did recommend I consult my PCP and ordered huge injections of an anti-imflamatory and a steroid in the hopes that his best guess of what was happening was true.
He’s a good guesser. They helped. A lot. Now I’m on 1,000 mg of anti-inflammatory and 50 mg of steroids a day.
I saw my PCP yesterday and she thinks I have a pinched nerve in my shoulder or upper arm and has ordered an MRI, but alas, I live in America and I’m now waiting for my health insurance provider to approve the exam. Thanks, ‘murica. If she’s right, treatment could be anything from some injections and physical therapy to surgery and occupational therapy. It’s a little scary.
The worst thing is I still have little feeling in my left hand, especially in the fingers, and still have to deal with sporadic, intense surges of pain throughout my arm. I have little strength and can barely grip. It sucks because I’m ambidexterous and thus I’m left-hand dominant for a fair number of tasks. It’s taking some adjustments in order to accomplish things I used to do easily or need to do regularly, like type.
The typing thing is the worst, actually, because I really want to finish drafting my second book, Don’t Lose Me, hoping I even have a chance of getting it out by mid-April. I haven’t postponed it yet, but I will if I have to. It all depends on the final diagnosis and treatment. I’m slowly working out some work-arounds. I’m typing this blog post at my desktop computer, where I can prop my left arm up and watch my fingers as I type – touch-typing disappears when you can’t touch/feel the keys – but even now, my arm’s starting to ache and I don’t want to push it too hard.
My laptop has decent handwriting recognition when I use a stylus, so that could be an option going forward. My tablet has the same function. Also, dictation software has improved greatly. I could always write long-hand, I guess, and hire someone to transcribe.
I’ll figure it out. Enough whining. Thanks.
My first book, Don’t Save Me, debuts in ten days on Amazon. It’ll be available as an ebook in the Kindle Store (preorder here), in the Kindle Unlimited subscription service, and in paperback. Tuesday, 14 January 2025.
Thomas A. Bishop 