Interesting Times

My stroke fully manifested itself in three days affecting my right side. I am right handed. Along with the surrounding muscle my not insignificant bicep, I was after all a construction worker, turned into jelly and sloshed down to the under side of my forearm. After that, if I concentrated real hard, I could make my arm twitch. It lay at my side my hand curled into a fist.

I started to get movement back quickly. After a couple of days I could open my hand and my elbow started to work again. My upper arm, however, did not want to move. It eventually started to move with a lot of pain.

The thing is, one of the curious things about strokes is there is no pain associated with them. In me a small part of my brain died were working nerve connections had pathways that I used to tell different muscles what to do. The stroke, more or less, bulldozed those paths and I had to learn new ones.

There was a complication which explains the pain. Apparently I have an old rotator cuff injury. I’ve had trouble sleeping for over a year due to pain in my right shoulder. While I was still working, I was using the shoulder, keeping it moving. When I had the stroke, it stopped moving. It had time to freeze up.

I’m moving it now but I’m limited in my range of motion because of pain and that is interfering with me making those new pathways. It amazes me now how weak it is. It’s almost nine weeks after the stroke. I go to Bally’s three times a week. I’m working on the arm, but it’s slow going. I’m using the different machines to help strengthen the right side of my body. Everything is progressing really well, strength and movement wise, except the shoulder. With most of the shoulder machines, I can’t reach the handle. The one that I can reach, if I use it with the least weight possible and I start it out with my left hand, I can push it up about eight or nine times.

I got a cortisone shot about two weeks ago. It was supposed to help. I complained after a week it wasn’t helping very much. The orthopedic doctor told me to give it three weeks. It will be two weeks on Monday. At first they said it would maybe take a couple days to work.

They also said I might have a rotator cuff tare. That could mean surgery. Surgery means going off aspirin. They won’t let me do that for another four months. The usual test for a cuff tare is loss of strength. They can’t tell that because of the stroke. So I guess were waiting for the cortisone shot to officially not work and then they can schedule the much more expensive MRI to determine if I have the tare, in which case they can do something about it July.

So, just another reason that the ancient Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times,” is no longer my favorite.