My Shoulder Hurts !

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You feel pain in your shoulder after a sudden stretch, during some activity. You decide to wait and watch if the pain subsides on its own. You try hot pack, ice pack, diclofenac application and  muscle relaxant tablets randomly to reduce pain. Pain remains mildly, but you feel better within 4-5 days. Slowly getting back to activity, you realise that pain increases while performing certain movements only. 

After another 15 days, on a holiday; you decide it is still bothering so let me see a doctor. Knowing that you are insurance covered, you find the best-known shoulder surgeon in the city (if it was possible, you may have tried the most known surgeon in the world) through Internet. The surgeon who is just about to enter the OT for some important surgery takes out some time to consult you. Knowing that the  problem is probably not meant to be handled by a surgical intervention he explains you the exact situation. 

Now that you have met him, instead of sending you empty handed, back to a local physician he prescribes you pain killers and/or recommends physical therapy. He mentions if condition persists he may need a scan or think of surgery. You were anyways always sure even if he had recommended an immediate surgery you would have anyways not taken his word as it is. Now, ask yourself if you want gardening to be done, do you call a farmer all the way from a farm or hire a gardener within your locality. 

If your plan A was to not do a surgery, why did you waste the time of someone who may have used it for some more crucial cases.Your family physician is capable enough to give you painkillers as and when required, he/she also knows best when to refer you to some super speciality consultation.

Continuing from where we left, you decide to take the medicine first because physiotherapy needs daily treatment and you are too busy with office work these days. Ten days of prescribed painkillers, you see pain comes back only once or twice a day. Improving but not convinced you (or on medical advice, looking at your chronic pain) decide to take an MRI. Reports show degenerative changes with some muscular problem which you are exactly not able to understand.

Now from family to friends to your medical advisers, everyone pushes you to do "SOME" PHYSIOTHERAPY. The first question you ask  your physio is how many days?

After all this when he wants you to start with exercise you feel it may aggravate the injury. Again ask yourself, under the effect of pain killers when you drove around and played with your child, don't you think you may have actually aggravated the injury unknowingly already.

Be sure well prescribed Exercise/ Electro-therapy will not do any harm, but yes it may have taken only a week to recover if you had taken up this in the initial stages.Now you need 45-50 days to recover. 

Please calculate the total time, cost and, of course, you can't calculate all the unnecessary suffering that too for such a minor injury. During the course, almost everyone you met actually gave you the best advice as per his field of specialisation. The question is, did you always enter the right place or just trying to gain a little too much, made a monster out of a simple injury.

Let us keep it simple, sometimes no one else but our own half knowledge leads us to situations where we never wanted to be.