Thursday, July 30, 2009

Another joint bites the dust

Friday, I somehow badly subluxed my left shoulder, as well as having the usual slippage in my neck. Needless to say, I was not happy. My housemate mostly managed to get the shoulder back in, and it turned out he has some basic massage skills, so he was also able to relax my neck enough for the vertabrae to slip back towards their original home. Still, sleeping and folding laundry and really attempting to do anything at all during the weekend was likely to be brought up short as my right hand grabbed my left upper arm and I offered whatever curses came to mind, which was a lot. By Sunday night, though, I had pretty much assigned the blame for the continuing nuisance to me handwriting more than usual. What with being left-handed, I figured that, since I wasn't exactly babying my arm, I had managed to inflame the tendons.

But I don't think that now, since this evening, the stupid shoulder seized up again. And this time, with Carapace's help, we figured out that the problem is orginating in the collar bones. Damn things are twisting, which locks up the shoulder, which then makes the muscles seize in the upper arm. It has been so bad off and on this week that I seriously considered seeing my doctor. Why did I not see him? Because experience has proven that any appointment for a subluxed or dislocated joint will coincide with a spontaneous reduction in that joint. I am a desperate woman to even think for a moment that seeing a doctor will be of any use in anything other than lightening my bank account and wasting my time with pointless tests.

So, I don't know what to do. This past weekend my attempt to go enjoy myself ended up with me standing and watching, afraid to put any new pressure on my shoulder as it started acting up again. This weekend has grander plans: road trip, museum, maybe some downtown San Antonio driving during which it would be real darn convenient to be able to steer. So, what to do? Anyone have any bright collar bone ideas?

2 comments:

One Sick Mother said...

Ugh. That sounds like a nightmare.

I have no collarbone-specific ideas. What I do if any joint gets messed up like that, is take a muscle relaxant in the evening or before going to bed. It is much easier to get the joint back in if the muscles are not in spasm.

Sometimes I have to rinse and repeat a couple of times before I can get it fixed.

I never take those guys during the day, because they completely zone me out.

yanub said...

Yeah, I was wishing I had some muscle relaxant around, other than what is in the liquor cabinet. Stuff in the liquor cabinet is useless if I'm also taking pain killer. And, boy, have I been taking pain killer!

On the bright side, it has been 24 hours without the shoulder/collarbone sliding out of place. Maybe, just maybe, everything will stay where it is supposed to be. Here's hoping!