an autodidact meets a dilettante…

It is easier to find men who will volunteer to die, than to find those who are willing to endure pain with patience.

Julius Caesar (and I’m willing to volunteer)

I haven’t been much in the mood for writing. You could say I’m feeing sorry for myself, or indulging in the pain I’m experiencing, but truth to tell, my current condition doesn’t make it so easy to ‘rise above myself and grasp the world’. I’m hoping at least to rise above my own pain and grasp the world of pain in general! But before I look at the ‘philosophy of pain’ I should update my situation.
The pain – shooting down from the left shoulder – first became acute on February 29. On that Saturday I arrived in an ambulance at Royal Adelaide Hospital, was examined, questioned and released without a diagnosis. Panadol, administered by the paramedic in the ambulance, had relieved the worst of the pain. I bought over the counter medication, ibuprofen and paracetamol, and using them at the upper limit of, and perhaps beyond, what was recommended, I was able to work at Eynesbury College on the following Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday I visited my GP. I was referred to St Andrews Hospital for an ultrasound and an x-ray. The GP told me that if the pain subsisted or worsened the hospital could give me a corticosteroid injection in the shoulder, which he thought would do the trick, painwise.

Meanwhile I was doing my own research. It seemed that bicipital or biceps tendinitis was the best fit. There was also bursitis and some kind of rotator cuff damage. I couldn’t think of an obvious cause, the only ‘different’ activity I’d been engaging in was lawn bowling, generally associated with geriatrics and hardly recognised as strenuous activity. However, when Sarah, who was also doing some research, noted that one line of enquiry led to ‘dangers and injuries from lawn bowling’, I felt less dismissive.

My appointment at St Andrews was for Friday (March 6), but on Thursday a felt increase in pain had me asking Sarah to ring the GP for stronger medication. I was prescribed ibuprofen plus codeine, which I started taking, again pushing beyond the recommended limits. However, my subjective sense told me that paracetamol was more effective than ibuprofen. Yet ibuprofen was an anti-inflammatory, paracetamol was not. It was all very confusing. Did I have pain without inflammation? How could this be?

I was driven to St Andrews hospital next morning, where I was given, first an X-ray, then an ultrasound test. This was a first for me, and I was able to watch the screen as the young woman administering the test slowly moved the scanner across my shoulder region. From her silent response and my own observation of a kind of softly rolling ocean of muscle disappearing into the distance, I got the strong impression that there was nothing untoward, no sign of damage or dysfunction.

Meanwhile, the pain continued, together with difficulty sleeping, and a general lethargy, which might just be a sort of depression at the sense of restricted movement. I noted that I felt physically at my best when lying still, on the sofa or my bed. Just getting up resulted in shooting pains. Reading, holding a book, was a pain. All of this was on my left side, and I’m very left-handed.

And so it went, until something dramatic happened, I think it was on Sunday (March 8). I experienced severe constipation, certainly unlike anything I’d ever experienced before, and I won’t go into the shitty details, though it did make me think of my mortality (as has this experience of pain in general). How many people have died on the toilet seat? A dirty little secret, no doubt. In any case, I recovered, and, upon further desperate research (and noting that, before this bout, I hadn’t done a ‘number two’ for days – how had I missed that?), I dropped the ibuprofen plus codeine medication and went back to paracetamol.
I work part-time at Eynesbury College, currently two days a week (Monday and Tuesday), barely enough to live on, as a teacher of academic English to foreign students. It’s the most poorly paid job in the teaching profession. I’m paid as a casual, and work from five-week contract to five-week contract. It’s anything but ideal. For example during this current contract, which ends tomorrow (Friday), there were two public holiday Mondays, for which I wasn’t paid. I was offered another five-week contract starting next week, but I’ve made a decision to decline the offer, hoping to get on top of this pain situation once and for all.

I won’t go into my parlous financial situation, but it’s important due to my status vis a vis subsidised health care. More about that anon.

So I worked on Tuesday, and it was something of a struggle. Yesterday (Wednesday March 11) I returned to my GP and received the report from St Andrews Hospital. So I’ll now present the findings together with my comments.

X-ray and ultrasound left shoulder with subacromial bursal injection

subacromial bursitis has to do with inflammation of the bursa that separates the upper surface of the supraspinatus tendon (one of the rotator cuff set of tendons) from the overlying coraco-acromial ligament, the acromion, and the coracoid. To be explored further. A bursa, or synovial bursa, is a fluid-filled sac which cushions connections between bones, tendons, ligaments etc in joints.

X-ray – no bony injury. Alignment is normal. Subacromial space is preserved. No subacromial calcification.

Nothing to see here.

ultrasound- biceps tendon intact. No fluid in the sheath. The tendon does not sublux during internal/external rotation

Nothing again. Subluxation is a partial or incomplete dislocation of a joint or organ.

supraspinatus and other rotator cuff tendons are intact. No tear or tendinopathy. The subacromial bursa does not appear thickened and no bursal drag with abduction is identified.

So there are four rotator cuff tendons or muscles (not too sure of the difference); supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor and subscapularis. The subacromial bursa is as described above.

The AC joint is normal in appearance and remained stable during forward flexion.

This is the acromioclavicular joint, at the top of the shoulder. It feels to me that the pain comes from ‘inside’ and lower than the shoulder, but it’s actually difficult to locate precisely. It may be a problem with the acromion, however. Or the Glenoid cavity or labrum. It may be a SLAP lesion (symptoms include ‘trouble localising a specific point of pain’. SLAP stands for ‘superior labrum, anterior to posterior’.

I’ll no doubt have to see a specialist, and the worry now is money