Health News

So it's time to follow on with the shoulder problem, which I thought was due to poor posture and adapting to the narrower body of an electric guitar, and or some pulled muscles in my back from doing something silly when turning a heavy mattress.

Yeah. Not so much, it turns out.

I was getting pins and needles down my right arm, waking up in the middle of the night with a shoulder that felt like I'd been abusing it for hours, and otherwise a tonne of pain. This, I was told by my regular osteo, was a trapped nerve at C6/7 (because the pins and needles went to my thumb and forefinger, but not the others).

I went for some regular treatment, and while it improved, I felt it had reached a point where I'd have a good day and two bad ones, and it had settled into a painful equilibrium. After a very uncomfortable and abandoned attempt in the hygenist's chair, I wound up with a recommendation to a different osteo, and Allah or someone be praised, managed to get an appointment two days later. He preferred to get an MRI before starting on something like I had, and the next day I was gritting my teeth in an MRI scanner. He had the results three days later.

West End private medicine. (No, I am not a millionaire. I don't spend money on foreign holidays.)

The radiologist's conclusion was "moderate degenerative disc disease, most marked at C6/C7 with foraminal narrowing and multilevel neural impingement (bilateral C4, C5, C6 and right C7)." So basically my neck vertebrae all all slightly out of whack. Everything else is good: spine is okay, spinal cord is unaffected, and my bone marrow is fine. (MRI can see that?)

I'm now in for a once-a-week treatment, at the moment by electric pads on my back. Pressure-based treatment like massage isn't what's needed. It seems to work. I'm in for probably another three sessions at least and maybe some more after that. But as long as it works... 

I also take the ibuprofen and / or paracetamol. I'm still AA and I don't like to take any kind of drugs if I can avoid it, but a) medical people are suggesting it, and b) it's not mood-altering.

I have to remind myself that the pain is not where my brain / body is telling me it is: there is nothing wrong with my shoulder that moving my neck about carefully won't cure. The nerve is getting pressed and sends all sorts of random signals to the brain, which then thinks I need to massage my shoulder. I don't.

Train, tube and bus seats are especially good at putting me in a posture that impinges the nerve, and I can't sit at a table for long either. I have to sleep on my back with some very carefully set-up pillow support. No raising weights above my head, so shoulder-presses are out.

I can play the guitar, and it is not causing any problems to do so. I have to stand up. Doing that for over an hour a day has worked wonders for my leg strength.

This kind of neck problem happens to much younger people, but as far as I'm concerned, this makes me officially old. Young people don't have to think about their bodies (diet, weight, exercise, sure, but not whether you carry a full watering-can in your left or right hand), old people do.