S ~ S

Adhesive Capsulitis (Frozen Shoulder) presents a good reason why one should not always let pain dictate the level of activity done. Usually it’s good to allow body parts complete rest (after the necessary repair work if needed) to heal on their own after an injury, but sometimes it’s bad. I learned the hard way (through ignorance) how that can be.

A few years ago, I hurt my left arm when trying to force a window open. I didn’t realize I was unconsciously favoring that arm since I spend so much time at my computer. When I was away from the computer doing other things, I must have been developing alternative methods of moving around that gradually changed the way I did things.

For about five months or more, I didn’t pay attention to the fact that I was losing mobility in my left arm. Because of my habit of injuring myself often by accident, I developed a way of ignoring pain and waiting patiently for it to go away. It’s not that I learned to become numb towards pain, because I can know when it’s there. I learned to trust my body to heal itself. It always did before, so I thought when my shoulder kept hurting more at night over the months, I was just losing my skill at it.

However, in this case with my arm, it was quite a strange experience to be losing my ability to move it. My first thought was that I’d try getting a professional massage. I knew I wanted something resembling Shiatsu; something like maybe deep-tissue therapy. Fortunately I did find someone skilled at this profession. He was amazed over my high tolerance to pain¹ when he tried to get my arm to move. But, try as he did, he couldn’t get it unstuck. So, I went to visit his friend who is a chiropractor. The chiropractor couldn’t get it to move either. He suggested I go for an MRI. As soon as I walked out of his office, I thought “Forget that! I’ll figure something else out (but I would give in if God insisted, but He never did).”

Convenience would have it that a deer tick bit me again and I got another lyme rash. That gave me a good excuse to ask a doctor his opinion of my arm while I went in to ask him his thoughts about my rash (that I already knew what to do about — Hi, Ho . . . Colloidal Silver to the rescue!). By that point in time, my arm was almost completely immobile. It was like having a 2 by 4 board nailed (with two nails, not one) to your shoulder with the arm strapped tight to it. He knew I didn’t have insurance, so he wasn’t so quick to make the same suggestions right away as the chiropractor did. Instead he wrote me a prescription to try physical therapy. He told me he had the same thing happen to his arm. He also said that he couldn’t endure the pain that physical therapy brought, so he opted for for surgery instead. He also claimed to have seen some people suffer permanent immobility because of not seeking treatment for such severe cases of frozen shoulder as what I had. After I left his office, I went straight to the nearest physical therapy office. I knew I could at least ask what it would cost. That was enough to say, “Forget that!” again.

So, back to my computer I went; this time to see what physical therapists do in cases like this. I read about people having success with acupuncture. Fortunately my sister-in-law (a chiropractor) was coming to visit and she was into doing acupuncture. Plus, she didn’t charge anything for giving it a try! We only had a few days to see what acupuncture could do. It did manage to get my arm to move about ½ of an inch or so. At least my son learned then I wasn’t faking it to get attention. He tried to move my arm with all his strength but got nowhere. Anyone for a little arm wrestling?

My husband didn’t believe anything was going to work (other than surgery). I told him he wasn’t going to cop out that easily from helping me. I had an idea. He only had to agree to help me out for a 40-day trial period involving 10-15 minutes of his time in the morning and the evening. I rigged up a rope and pulley system where I could sit in a chair and greater force on my arm could be used by having it tied and pulled on.

For the first week, hardly any noticeable improvement could be seen. I knew I could see tiny bits of change, but hubs kept insisting it was futile. It was when we were into the second week of my do-it-yourself at home torture chamber that progress was becoming obvious. Darn, now I wish I could have made videos of this and put it on youtube.com (but I didn’t have a camera back then)! You’d have to cut the volume down though if I did that because that’s when I did some daily screaming. Even Oliver tried to console me during these moments by gently placing his paw on my leg while hubs pulled and pushed on my arm. Master mister isn’t no weakling. He’s a carpenter who is built like a rock, so if anyone could get my arm to move, it had to be him. I told him to tap into that part of his brain where the memories were that held his desire to inflict pain on me and put it to good use. It must have worked — because in 40 days time, I got back about 95% of my arm movement! The other 5% was easy for me to get back on my own even though that part took another month or so before it happened.

Now when I look back about what’s written and said about the length of time people have to endure such crap with a frozen shoulder, why can’t I go into some record book for getting rid of something like this as fast as I did? I guess I’ll just need to remain content with what I did get and not complain.

One last note about my left arm: That was the same arm I recently injured again. This time I’m not going to baby it! Maybe that’s why I felt like I had to write today about my frozen shoulder experience that happened a few years ago. I needed the reminder.

¹Some aspies, such as myself, can be both hyper and/or hypo sensitive to pain. Read about Asperger’s Syndrome and Unequal Reaction to Pain.

[Edit Added 12-13-8] Here are a couple of posts by others sharing their frozen shoulder experience:

Pain continuing — Splitpea’s Weblog.

Just What Is a Frozen Shoulder Anyway?? — It’s A Kat’s Life