It all started with an impact on my right shoulder. This particular right shoulder, who has been my loyal companion for all of my existence, got whacked when I fell off the top of a slide when I was a little thing about yay high and in the blissful time of the single-digit years, with a lot of energy and exactly zero notion about gravity, bones, fissures, or the consequences that compounding gravity, concrete and height might have on my young, reckless body. Results: A fissured clavicle, and, I suspect, the start of my shoulder woes.
It must have been then, I surmise, when my shoulder socket’s labrum (that’s doctorese for lip) got torn. It is what is called a Bankart lesion. Me being a little kid, I never thought that feeling wrong in my shoulder was strange; and so, I never complained about it (also because I am somewhat stoic when it comes down to my body: I endure it and do not complain, because it could be worse.)
Fast forward a few decades.
I was feeling that right shoulder, it was bothering me with pain, limited mobility, pain (oh wait, I did mention that already, didn’t I? Nevermind, that’s how it was) and occasionally a sharp twinge that would make me reach for my shoulder and wince. So, I went to a rheumatologist. He asked X-rays, looked at them, and said, ‘yep, this here is an old Bankart, and it needs repair because your mobility is impacted.’
That’s another thing: I genuinely could not move my arm out. Some movements were simply verboten. I could do them, mind, but there came a point where my shoulder would go dramatic: ‘Thus far, and not an inch further!’
I had accepted those limitations, even embraced them, because, hey, that’s how my shoulder was; it was just “The Way Things Were,” I had to “Live With It and Be Happy It Isn’t Worse. ” That is, until that visit with the rheumatologist in 2022. He said, ‘I can give you back range of motion and pain relief.’
I signed up for the surgery faster than a hummingbird flaps its wings. Pain free range of motion I did not have before? Where’s the dotted line? What part of my soul do I need to give up in return?
It turned out, I did not have to part with any portion of my soul. Surgery here in Portugal was covered mostly by my (private, self-paid) insurance, and they did not say “no” to covering it. Something about proper, affordable access to healthcare being a human right or such, I think, even when you’re paying for your own insurance. The remaining part was quite within reach. So, I signed, signed again, signed once more, and off I was to the proper assembly line of care.
Sure, I could have used the public health care system. I actually went to the trouble of asking in the public health system. When I did, they showed me the wait list for a surgery. It was what it was because staffing shortages and other such intractable problems, which are still being solved as we speak. So, between waiting for the first available slot in the public health care system, which would have been in… September 2026, I chose to go private, because pain is pain and being able to reach overhead without swearing is not a luxury. Also, insured.
So, one fine day in 2022, I went into an OR with an ouchy shoulder and came out with a non-ouchy shoulder after a three-and-a-half-hour surgery. Which, according to the surgeon who worked on me, was somewhat of an outlier. My shoulder, like its proprietor, is an eccentric, apparently.
I’ll spare you the time I spent doing physical therapy and painkillers, because it was, as they say in America, a doozy.
Forward to today.
I started having shoulder woes again. Twinges, clicks, occasional pain, but my mobility stayed, by and large, unaffected.
Given the nature of my pain, I decided my shoulder had gone Communist. Something about joints controlling the means of locomotion and pain receptors of the world uniting.
Anyway, to counter that strike, I decided to see another doctor: The one who had seen me in 2022 had gone to pasture, apparently; and so, I had to seek for outside assistance.
This doctor, a younger chap, took his time looking at how I moved my shoulder, and, as if to prove a point, my shoulder decided to flare up just in the middle of the examination. I felt it, and winced.
The young chap thought it prudent that I should get a shoulder MRI, to see what was going on. There was nothing wrong with my range of motion, he said, but I could be suffering from tendinitis (doctorese for inflammation in my tendons.)
I went to get the aforementioned MRI a Friday morning.
I knew I was going into a tube, so I was prepared for it.
What I was not prepared for was how narrow that tunnel was. Its roof was about 5 centimeters off my nose. It was snug. I could barely move in there; and add to that the restraints they had on me to get a clear image… Yeah, there’s a nice, helpless feeling all over. But helpless and narrow spaces mix about as well as oil and water.
That’s when panic started to creep in. The walls stated to feel as if they were closing in. My mind went lizard-brain. The walls are closing in and I am going to get crushed by this and I will be stuck and won’t be able to breathe and I will die here and they will have to cut my body in two to get it out and the walls are closing in and I can’t breathe and…
Yeah, not my finest moment. I hit the panic button. Repeatedly.
I’m a wimp, I know. I own it. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
After I was taken out of that infernal machine, pale and shaking, I was reassured and told I could reschedule. Which I did, for the following day, a Saturday.
I had a good night’s sleep, and before going back to face that thing I took an anti-anxiety pill. Or, rather, a quart of it. I saved another quart for right before going in to the machine.
By they time I was led to the same exact tube that had caused me to panic the day prior, I was in chem heaven. I even said hi to it!
I had brought eye patches to wear too. Apparently, having your eyes closed while in that sleeve helps. It does. I survived, the walls did not close in, nothing happened and I got out real happy and mellow for having done what was necessary to figure out the root of my shoulder’s Communist tendencies.
Now all there is left to do is to wait for the imaging report. I expect it with about the same amount of anticipation as, say, an audit notice from the revenue department. But I will know. And that is half the battle.
Is it worth dying in an MRI tunnel? Yes. And no.
Would I do it again? Maybe, if I am paid well enough in advance. I should collect hazard pay for this.
But it’s done, and I am happier for it.