Shoulder Pains

Doctors can be aggravating.

I saw the doctor who referred me to get the Cortisone injection for the first time in two and a half weeks, and the vast majority of my 45-minute appointment was listening to him talk about how he doesn't understand why my shoulder still hurts.

And how if the pain I'm feeling is really from my labrum tear, then the Cortisone should have helped. Even though I explained to him that I got Cortisone treatment for the torn cartilage in both of my knees, and I still had to have surgery on each of them.

And the dangers of being on Vicodin for too long...even though this dude knows my medical history and knows I've been on pretty much every narcotic under the sun and am still not a drug addict, AND it's been less than a month.

And how he could try to get me into see the orthopedic surgeon at his main office instead of waiting for him to come to NYU in two weeks, but he doesn't think the surgeon will want to do anything about this, talking to me like I'm anxious to have my 23rd surgery (which he is aware I've had that many) as if I really want to have to deal with the possibility of surgery in the middle of my first semester of my Master's program. And don't even get me started on him suggesting a medical leave of absence over a SHOULDER injury. Let's just say I quickly explained to him that I've done that before for some way worse stuff and it's not going to happen again, and if I took a leave it would equate to me never getting my degree because my life is never calm or free from health problems.

I genuinely do not know how I'm going to make it to Christmas break before doing anything else about my shoulder when even writing a blog post or my weekly 1-2 page response papers makes my whole shoulder and arm feel like someone is stabbing it, and I'm going to have approximately 75 pages of papers due in December in quick succession. I have to find SOMETHING to be done, because I cannot keep going on in this much pain with my one good arm pretty much out of commission.

The question is what that something will be, and what's it going to cost me.