Grumpa Joe's Place

Over the last two months, I have been suffering intense pain in the right shoulder. Finally, I made an appointment with a doctor to find help. Simple things in life, like threading a belt through the seven belt loops on a pair of jeans, had become unbearable. I actually learned to thread the belt before I put on the pants. I had to put my right arm into a coat jacket first. Cleaning. myself on the toilet became an impossible task. The worst pains happened while sleeping. No matter how I twisted and turned to find a spot where the right arm felt comfortable it lasted for only seconds.

Throughout my life, I have self-treated muscle and tendon pains using ibuprofen, cold, heat, and rest, but this time none of that worked. I had to get help. I had a regular visit scheduled with my Primary Care doctor two weeks ago and drove to his office only to learn that he has been out because of illness and woudn’t return until sometime in April. I complained that it would have been nice to know that. The receptionist said they left a voice mail. Knowing me, I didn’t recognize his phone number and blew it off as a SPAM call. Not satisfied, I asked if anyone was covering for him. “Yes,” she said but “he is on vacation. Would you like me to make an appointment for you?”

“Don’t bother,” I said. “It is time for me to find a new doctor closer to home.” I hated to do this because he has been my primary for forty years, and we have become friends, but I do drive twenty-five miles one way to get to his office, and a new clinic just opened four miles from home. I called and made an appointment as soon as I got home.

The new doctor is young, probably in his forties, which I like because it’ll be hard to outlive him. He is only ten years out of medical school, which makes him current in medicine. After ten minutes of record review, discussion, and examination I explained that I just completed set of blood tests for my previous doctor and that the results are on MyChart. The previous doctor and the new doctor are in different organizations. I was surprised because he dialed them up and there they were. “I am impressed, the medical profession is finally catching up to the rest of the world in technology,” I said. He smiled and said, “we do our best.” Then he asked if I drink. “Of course I do,” was my reply. “You may want to cut back because it is proven that alcohol shrinks the brain which leads to dimentia.” I did not want to hear that at all!

Next, he told me what I had was tendonitis, but he will send me for an x-ray to make sure. He won’t send me for an MRI even though that is a more accurate picture of the bones, muscles and tendons because my insurance won’t pay. That was not happy news, because my Medicare is the best(it is the only) insurance in the country for taking care of seniors. I didn’t want to hear of them denying payment because of my age. He also recommended taking medication. His first choice was a drug which I don’t remember the name of but sounded like it was souped up Ibuprofen. I told him I would rather not be taking something that has made me bleed from various organs in the past. The next choice was methylprednisolone( mfg in China), a fancy word for prednesone, and I told him that it is hard on the stomach. What I didn’t tell him is that my wife had a terrible experience with prednesone and considered it the same as poison. I chose the prednesone.

It has been twenty-four hours since I began taking this drug, and I noticed it working within one hour of swallowing the first pill. WOW! What a relief. I also received a phone call from the doctor’s assistant, who reported to me that the x-ray confirmed that I had arthritis and tendinosis. I never heard of tendinosis before, so I looked it up. It is the same as tendinitis, except that tendinitis can be cured quickly (4-5 weeks), and tendinosis is a long-term cure, like 5-6 months, and must include physical therapy to strengthen the muscles and stretch the tendons of the shoulder.

Since I have not been doing anything physical like riding my bicycle, which has caused this condition in the past, I have been digging in my brain for other possibilities. One thing has come to mind: typing on the computer. In the past few weeks I have been diligently working on my novel and writing thousands of words by pressing thousands of keys. How does moving your fingers get you tendonitis of the shoulder, you ask? I can feel strain on the muscles in my right wrist and sometimes it reaches up to the elbow. That is still not the shoulder is it? But what if the ergonomics of my key board is placing a strain on the shoulder at the same time all of those finger muscles are straining the wrist to the elbow to the shoulder? There is a song lyric that explains the physiology of the human skeleton that tells the whole story.

Dem bones,

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

The toe bone’s connected to the foot bone,
The foot bone’s connected to the ankle bone,
The ankle bone’s connected to the leg bone,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

The leg bone’s connected to the knee bone,
The knee bone’s connected to the thigh bone,
The thigh bone’s connected to the hip bone,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Dem bones, dem bones, dem dry bones,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

The hip bone’s connected to the back bone
The back bone’s connected to the neck bone,
The neck bone’s connected to the head bone,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

The finger bone’s connected to the hand bone,
The hand bone’s connected to the arm bone,
The arm bone’s connected to the shoulder bone,
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

Dem bones, dem bones gonna walk around
Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk around
Dem bones, dem bones, gonna walk around
Now shake dem skeleton bones!

Filed under: Aging, Biography, family, Humor | Tagged: Ergonomics, Shoulder Pain, Tendinitis, Tendinosis | 6 Comments »