Slices of me...

I've been having some shoulder trouble lately, and the funny thing is I haven't been swimming. Nada. Nothing since September when the local YMCA did a bait-and-switch on the pool schedule rendering my (low-cost) membership useless. They allowed me to cancel it immediately, as I was EXACTLY 30 days from when I activated it, but that was the last time I got in the water.

So it can't be "swimmer's shoulder", because I haven't been swimming.

Right?

I think it happened when I was changing the re-mounting the wheel on my car in the (steep) driveway, after plugging a hole made by a 1/4" bolt that had lodged itself through the tread.

Anyway, I went in some 3 weeks ago for the initial exam, and after a lot of painful manipulation demonstrating the limits (and way beyond) of my pain-free mobility, he declared a suspected torn labrum, and ordered up an arthrogram.

For those who might not know, an arthrogram is an MRI with contrast, a liquid pumped into the joint via a needle threaded INTO the joint capsule.

Strangely enough, my wife has been having similar issues with her shoulder, and had gone through an arthrogram just a week before mine. She'd had considerable pain when they were injecting the contrast. Me, being the wimp I am, was dreading that part of the procedure. I'm not all that fond of needles (though you'd think I'd be okay with it, given that I have to go through many blood draws to track medication levels due to my colitis).

But I've got to give Paul at Sound Medical Imaging props -- aside from the first poke, that part of the procedure was nearly painless. 

The other part of it was that going with Sound Medical Imaging go me into the procedure a good two weeks before the place my doctor had originally sent me to to get the arthrogram.

So anyway, after listening to classic rock, being fed into a tube and told several times to hold my breath and not move (just for short periods of time), I walked out of there with a CD of all these images, like a spiral sliced ham laid out like a deck of cards that is my left shoulder.

The phrase "any way you slice it" comes to mind...

So that was over two weeks ago. I (finally) have the follow-up appointment tomorrow morning to go over the results. Hopefully it's something that's easily fixed... Even though I haven't been swimming, I still want to be able to click off a few laps.