this is the latest shoulder news: it looks like TK and I will be taking a trip to lovely san antonio, texas, sometime in the next 3 months for some form of shoulder replacement surgery. fun times to be had by all.
why san antonio, you ask? the only good thing about having a mysterious freakish disease is that you can convince really big name doctors to treat you. so we're going to TX to see the wizard -- the guy who literally wrote the book on shoulder surgery. he's reviewed most of my records, and now just needs to look at recent xrays to determine just how bad it is, which will in turn determine whether we can get away with something less invasive than a "total shoulder replacement."
either way, it's freaky in that it's a major surgery and also undeniably means burning a bridge or too, therapeutically speaking. then again, the current bridge doesn't seem to work very well, so it's hard to view this as potentially making things any worse than they already are. they say that you make the joint replacement decision when you really just can't go on the way you are (vis a vis pain and limitaions) any longer, and i think i'm pretty firmly there.
so while i'm acutely wary of making things worse in the long run, i'm also wary of losing my 30s to this crap. it's time, as my mom would say, to move on to the next activity. which seems to be a midwinter vacation to lovely san antonio.
oh, and possibly the best part about our little cross-country expedition is that my orthopedist here is interested enough in the special surgery this guy does that he's talking about scheduling his own trip to SA to coincide with my surgery. i hope we all get to go do some sightseeing, too.... ("And here we are with Dr Wickler at the Alamo....")
Posted by cmandala at December 2, 2006 11:47 PM