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I got the prognosis for my fucked-up shoulder: slight tear in my labrum (probably requiring surgery to reattach the biceps tendon somewhere it doesn't pull on the labral tear[1]).
Very confident in the guy; excellent bedside manner, prompt and sure diagnosis, to the point where I was asking him about 2/3 of the way through the "move like this, push on my hands like so, now do this, that...."
"You know what's up, don't you?"
"Torn labrum."
"Well, fuck."
"Hey, I could have said 'torn rotator cuff.'"
"Compelling argument, but, still, not what I was hoping to hear."
"Let's show you the next steps on this Powerpoint, then get you set up with a magnetic resonance diagnostic to get a look at the soft tissue, because as we can see, your shoulder X-ray is just fine, except for that collarbone thing twenty years ago."
I expect to hear from the imaging place Monday, and if I can squeeze in there Monday or Tuesday, super. I've been told not to take any aspirin in the interim because it thins the blood, which can cause bleeding or dye-seeping issues when I do go in for that; since I take aspirin only occasionally (courtesy of the informed advice MBI gave me on the "rotate your painkillers" post a couple months back... and have only been taking one of the four options maybe once a fortnight since), this is no big deal.
[1] There are two usual approaches the guy I saw uses, with one more frequently used for older athletes (the one mentioned above; the other involves abrading and stitching together the torn edges of the labrum, but apparently that has a much higher incidence of stiffness and loss of mobility when it's done in older folks).
One of the guys at work just had this done on his right arm for precisely the same situation on Monday, though I don't know if the extent of his injury was more or less severe than mine; at least this isn't my dominant arm. But words like "take a week off work" and "six weeks in a sling" and "six months of rehab" were given to me by his fiancee.... maybe I can recover faster than he is because I lift and don't smoke. I hope.
Very confident in the guy; excellent bedside manner, prompt and sure diagnosis, to the point where I was asking him about 2/3 of the way through the "move like this, push on my hands like so, now do this, that...."
"You know what's up, don't you?"
"Torn labrum."
"Well, fuck."
"Hey, I could have said 'torn rotator cuff.'"
"Compelling argument, but, still, not what I was hoping to hear."
"Let's show you the next steps on this Powerpoint, then get you set up with a magnetic resonance diagnostic to get a look at the soft tissue, because as we can see, your shoulder X-ray is just fine, except for that collarbone thing twenty years ago."
I expect to hear from the imaging place Monday, and if I can squeeze in there Monday or Tuesday, super. I've been told not to take any aspirin in the interim because it thins the blood, which can cause bleeding or dye-seeping issues when I do go in for that; since I take aspirin only occasionally (courtesy of the informed advice MBI gave me on the "rotate your painkillers" post a couple months back... and have only been taking one of the four options maybe once a fortnight since), this is no big deal.
[1] There are two usual approaches the guy I saw uses, with one more frequently used for older athletes (the one mentioned above; the other involves abrading and stitching together the torn edges of the labrum, but apparently that has a much higher incidence of stiffness and loss of mobility when it's done in older folks).
One of the guys at work just had this done on his right arm for precisely the same situation on Monday, though I don't know if the extent of his injury was more or less severe than mine; at least this isn't my dominant arm. But words like "take a week off work" and "six weeks in a sling" and "six months of rehab" were given to me by his fiancee.... maybe I can recover faster than he is because I lift and don't smoke. I hope.
