Put Your Hands Up

If you know me from facebook – you will know of The Shoulder. You will know that I finally got a diagnosis for the agonising pain that has been haunting me for over a year – involving the words inflamed fluid sac, three ruptured tendons, calcium build up, trapped nerve and the need for a bone shaving operation.

You will also know that I had a cortisone injection on Wednesday. A procedure that involved a double dose of anaesthetic, followed by 40 minutes of what can only be described as “jiggling” of a needle the size of a bic biro pen deep within the calcium to dislodge it, finished off with the actual pain relief injection into those tendons…

You will know of the tears, the nervous laughing, the nausea and of course, the following 48 hours of a whole new world of pain.

But, what you might not know is that today, for the first day in give or take 18 months I am pain free. I don’t feel like I have a ten ton weight hanging off my arm. I don’t feel a constant nagging aching deep bone pain that affects how I move, how I feel, how I sleep. Or not as the case has been for some time.

You will also not know that I can now, tentatively and with a slight wince, raise my arm to the side and rotate my shoulder to point to the sky. I’m not swinging from the chandeliers; I’m not reaching for things off the top shelf. And I still can’t do up my own bra, but fuck me sideways this feels good. I am looking forward to going to bed and being able to pick my position to sleep based on nothing more than whim. Not because to sleep on my right side does something weird and compressing to the fluid sac that makes me cry after about 4 seconds. Not because to sleep on my back, hoists the shoulder up to my ears, which tugs at the ruptured tendons and makes me cry after about 7 seconds. And to sleep on my left makes my shoulder droop down and back, and literally makes the calcium grate on the bone and makes me cry after about 11 seconds….

I might just sleep on my front just for the sheer hell of it...