Shoulder Reds & Blues (meaning nerves)

Shoulder update: So my physical therapist, Laura, looked at my x-ray and relayed that she thought I did not have as much arthritis in my AC joint as had been relayed from my doctor. Not that she was undermining my good doctor, but that the term "arthritis" can be used as a general term to describe any type of inflammation. We used the ionto "Action Patch" to reduce and calm the inflammation in my AC joint.

Looks cool huh? The part of the patch that says the "Empi" has a pad underneath. I load the patch up with steroids (yeah, I'm on steroids - see my bulk?) stick the pad part of the patch directly over my AC joint and pull the little tab sticking out (like on the back of electronic toys). The patch then electronically shoots the steriod from the pad into my AC joint. I did two rounds of this treatment (8 patches) last winter and it helped my shoulder a lot. I only had to do 3 patches this round to calm down my AC joint.

After calming my AC joint down, we could explore and see what else may be causing my pain. To explain my pain: I had pain in my shoulder blade, running down my entire arm (centering in my joints - elbow & wrist), pain under my arm into my rib cage and armpit, pain in my right breast (too much info, I know), pain into my breast bone, my collar bone, and then finally running up my neck and even into my ear some days. I didn't ever have all of that pain at one time, thankfully, it would rotate to those areas. Laura thought that the AC joint was only a contributing factor and not the source of the pain. She started poking around; pushing and pulling (as fun as it sounds) and discovered that it is the nerve network that runs from my C5 vertebra which totally explained all of my pain areas because the nerves run everywhere I was hurting. I asked Laura what would cause this nerve pain and she said looking down a lot, lifting kids, anything of that sort. Laura got all excited because she had been trained in a treatment for this type of problem. For our last four sessions she's done a deep tissue "massage". Massage is a nice word for what she does - it is pretty painful and she has to remind me that the rooms are not private because of all my moaning! She massages my muscles and surrounding tissues pretty hard to communicate to the nerves. By the fourth treatment, Laura said I had loosened up quite a bit and that she could get to more areas than she could before. I have also had a decrease in pain, which has been wonderful! I don't wake up every morning stiff and sore. With the loss of pain, I've gotten excited while exercising and have tried to exercise my arms, but the pain returns pretty quickly, so I'm not ready for that yet! BUMMER!

I had almost forgotten how life without pain felt. It's been time consuming and I've had to find friends who will watch my kids all of the time, but it's been SO worth it! It's also an added expense but Nathan has been totally supportive despite that. Well, I'll keep you updated. I pray for the day that I will be totally free of pain.