When Neither One Works

 Things got weird this last weekend. Going into the weekend, the right arm was somewhat mobile, pain free,  and looking forward to regaining muscles or tendons or whatever means of control it still lacks after 6 weeks of forced immobility. Its hand works perfectly, with great grip strength, but there's a disconnect when it comes to getting it elevated enough, say, to touch my head. It has to be placed in position. PT is the anticipated cure, with appointments scheduled.

When I woke up Sunday, the left arm still had the mobility it had the months before, only now any move forward and to the center is sharply painful. My plan of perhaps fixing that one in late summer just morphed into a plan to ask the surgeon at this week's "final" appointment  how soon we can schedule it, period.

Think of it this way: with both hands working, I could mostly function. The right hand needs something to bring it left and high. Low mostly works just fine, though I haven't explored all options. Even when it needs effort to get in position or stay held in position, mostly it works. If I can brace that elbow on the arm of the chair, the hand can scratch my head when I move the head into place if it itches... which of course it does. That's just life. Braced, it can hold a hairbrush, but not move it to brush the hair, a job designated for the left hand since surgery. Same for the toothbrush. So those get done, when they get done, with sharp pain now.  With both hands working together I can manage to get a wet washcloth across my face, carefully.  Neither arm can replace the shower head back up on its hook. Not yet anyway. I'm considering the cost of a plumber to make some permanent height adjustment on that wall. Or perhaps there's a gadget one can attach without making a hole at risk of puncturing plumbing behind the wall? I'm open for ideas here.

I don't know enough of internal anatomy to understand why the sudden pain when the left shoulder has been the one relied on for so long. I'm sure its use has contributed to whatever suddenly changed. Imagination fills in the gap to suggest some chip of bone, undermined by the arthritis, loosened and relocated in an unknown spot where it grates between other parts of that shoulder joint when they move. But I've never dissected one, nor even seen diagrams, so who knows?

My supply of "normal" painkillers doesn't touch it, though the ache after movement does ease after around an hour. I can assure you I'm not at all tempted to go back to NSIDS since the pancreatitis. After resisting doing so for ages, I'm about to request an interim supply of the heavy stuff. Whatever the cause, it won't be needed much after surgery, based on past experience with the other shoulder. However, once again there'll be however many weeks of the sling before the needed PT to go through to restore function to that arm.

The frustrating part is not the pain. The frustrating part is just when I start thinking I can be independent and capable of doing normal things on my own again and soon, life has its way of laughing, in a way that's both full of irony and bereft of humor. It reminds me of my chronological age, not the twenty-year-old remembered me tucked away inside. She's still there on those mornings when I wake pain-free, read to go and take on the world again, at least until it takes on me.