The Kind of News That You Never Expect

Since 1997 my health would not be what anyone would call great. In that time I've had 6 major surgeries and an additional 13 smaller surgical procedures. Its not been fun. Not even the drugs. About a month ago my shoulder which has been the recipient of most of those surgeries started to hurt much more than "normal". Typically I rate my pain as a 4 or 5 out of 10 on a daily basis and keep it under control with medication. As I said about a month ago the pain level went up dramatically. I had not done anything to cause this so after a week or two I made an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon who has been treating me. His exam did not show anything obvious although I could barely speak afterwards from the intense pain from the pulling and twisting. He ordered an MRI and an Arthrogram to look for any issues.

The tests themselves were not pleasant as I love being inside a 10000 pound magnetic tube with my arm twisted up in a very uncomfortable position. The Arthrogram was not much better as the Radiologist had trouble getting his catheter of die into what is left of my shoulder. Immediately after that we looked at the monitor and he remarked that several areas of my labrum appeared to be out of position or missing altogether. Then it was back for another MRI with the dye now inside my shoulder. Now I knew my labrum was bad as I have had both and arthroscopic and open labral repair done in the past. The labrum is the piece that cushions the shoulder joint and its the piece that is often torn by pitchers and quarterbacks as well as hockey players after a big hit in the shoulder. So in any case the test were done which caused even more pain, but I was happy that I'd at least soon hopefully know what was going on. In fact my wife was trying to prepare me for the likely results of nothing wrong beyond my past problems. For a day I even started to think that was true. Yesterday we got the report back.

Rather than calling me the Dr. came down to talk to my wife. Its not normal by any stretch of the imagination. Without going into too much medical detail I have 6 different serious problems. 5 of which will require surgical repair at some point. When my wife relayed the news to me it was like the old Batman TV show. KABLAM, POW, BOOM. I had years ago decided I could live with what I have. The chronic pain and reduced function of my arm was bad, but in my mind it was not worth going under the knife for a few degrees more movement or a possible reduction in pain. I was content, but somehow things changed. I don't know how or why, but they changed. So now I am at that point where I need to go back and revisit a surgical possibility on my shoulder. I lost the last 2.5 years to surgeries on my foot and was really looking forward to getting back up and around again. Now I'm facing having 2 separate tears of my rotator cuff fixed and having a shoulder replacement at a minimum. The report said the level of arthritis in my shoulder was fairly marked which in layman's terms means very advanced. Bone on bone every time I move my arm. Think about that for awhile.