A Mommy Story

Sorry folks, I’m being whiny today. You’ve been warned.

Last week I told you all about the shoulder pain I was experiencing after I got my flu shot. My doctor diagnosed it as bursitis, resulting from a poorly administered shot, and reassured me that it would likely go away within a week. I wanted to believe her. I hoped she was absolutely right. I even foolishly decided not to seek out additional treatment yet beyond the heat and ibuprofen she recommended, thinking that it would quickly heal.

The update? Her prediction didn’t come true. While most of the sharp pain is now gone, I’m dealing with a constant dull ache that I can generally ignore most of the day if I don’t move my shoulder too much. But it often swells to a more noticeable pain in the evenings that shoots down into my left arm and occasionally makes my fingers numb.

Some arm movements remain difficult, and I’ve discovered I really can’t use that arm to carry anything more than a few pounds without it hurting. The popping in the joint has continued, too, and ewww that’s a horrible feeling.

In short: this sucks, and I want to go to bed and hide from it.

After I had reached a week without significant improvement, I emailed my doctor and described what I was experiencing. I asked if we should consider the oral steroids that she had recommended we try if it didn’t get better. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of steroids, but willing to give them a go if they’d reduce the inflammation to heal my shoulder faster.

Her reply the next morning was not what I was expecting to read: based on what I described, she thought we should skip the steroids and go straight to physical therapy.

Yep, physical therapy. Forget the small stuff, we’ve moved on to considering this a major injury in need of intervention.

Because of a flu shot.

That didn’t even immunize me from the flu.

To say I’m frustrated with this series of events would be an understatement. I now have no idea when, or if, my shoulder will be back to normal and pain-free. I had never heard of SIRVA (Shoulder Injury Related to Vaccine Administration) before this, or ever considered filling out VAERS paperwork to document an injury.

So now I need to schedule physical therapy. Because I have so much time (and money) available for that, right?

Again, please forgive the whining. I’m not used to being anything other than physically healthy, with occasional lower back pain that isn’t a chronic issue. Having reduced function for one of my arms is difficult for me to cope with. The constant ache makes me grouchy, too, and I don’t like taking a lot of pain meds for it. This wouldn’t be so bad if I knew there was an end point, but not knowing when that end point will be (tomorrow? a week? a month? a year?) makes it overwhelming.

Alright, I know I need to get over myself and make the calls to get things started. No more stalling, hoping it’ll go away on its own.

 Time to get to work.

I’m calling for the physical therapy referral today. I’m calling to set up a chiropractic consultation, too. And I’ll accept that my schedule is going to be mad for a little while and I’ll likely hit my health insurance deductible early in the year. If it results in having full function of my left shoulder again, it’ll all be worth it.

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UPDATE: When I contacted my doctor to ask for the referral for the physical therapist, she heard the current state of my shoulder and decided to switch courses again. She’s certain I should have seen more improvement by now, so the new (new) plan is a referral to an orthopedic doctor who specializes in shoulders before anyone has a chance to manipulate my shoulder. Yay?