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Posted
On 12/3/2020 at 2:17 PM, Stargrunt6 said:

I never broke a tooth, somehow. I usually have some prolonged numbness myself.  I tried eating at the Noodles and Company a few hours after a procedure. It wasn't pretty. 

Good for you.  I usually refrain from opioids, but I started feeling the sting and really needed it. 

No, actually just a small one for my room.  

I just wondered how people back in the day coped with things like asthma and allergies. Maybe that's another reason they died early. 

Actually infections were a major killer.  It should also be noted that 'Listerine' surgery (named after Dr Lister, not the mouthwash), that is the use of antiseptics in surgery, really did not commence until the late 1800s.  How many babies and mothers died because doctors refused to wash their hands between patients?  

Then came antibiotics, that have saved many a person from early expiry.

The three As.  Antiseptic, Anesthetic and Antibiotics came together at the right time.

But the other point is that people with asthma, allergies and the like did not breed as substantially as the very healthy ones.  Modern medicine has sidetracked Darwinism substantially. 

The cemetery where I do voluntary work as a tour guide - first internments in the 1870s, is literally full of people who died in their 20s, 30s, 40s or earlier from conditions that we would consider minor today.  Some family graves with five or six children all dead before they turned ten.

One of Australia's most famous poets who is buried there was actually deaf.  He lost the hearing in one ear at the age of 12 and the other ear at the age of 14, from conditions that today would be handled simply by a dose of antibiotics.

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Posted

Another x-ray check and finally got rid of the orthesis on Thursday. I had looked forward to sleep without the annoying thing, but of course now the arm muscles hurt at night due to not being held in the previous position, so right now I'm actually sleeping worse than before. Oh well, this too shall pass.

Range of movement is now slightly above 90 degrees forward - doctor asked me how high I could go - and maybe 15 to the rear; arm swings quite naturally when walking again. Sideways remains the hardest; I tend to pull up the shoulder and struggle even for 45 degrees, so this is now the focus of physio. Got homework to stretch the arm on a table while sitting, and rotate the shoulder down while lifting it up. Everybody tells me I'm doing very well, it's just gonna take some time.

Posted

From what I have been told by others, there are two kinds of physical therapy patients:

- those who do more than the PT therapist prescribes, which causes problems;

- those who do less than the PT therapist prescribes, which causes problems.

 

Pro athletes, at least those of the North American ilk, are renowned for being in the former category. Also not surprisingly renowned for massive intake of the middle-grade opiate painkillers. Of course, if my paycheck depended on restoration of physicality, I'd be doing the same thing.

 

 

Posted
1 hour ago, Ivanhoe said:

From what I have been told by others, there are two kinds of physical therapy patients:

- those who do more than the PT therapist prescribes, which causes problems;

- those who do less than the PT therapist prescribes, which causes problems.

 

Pro athletes, at least those of the North American ilk, are renowned for being in the former category. Also not surprisingly renowned for massive intake of the middle-grade opiate painkillers. Of course, if my paycheck depended on restoration of physicality, I'd be doing the same thing.

 

 

I watched this guy on Rogan. He stated that American athletes have a tendency to overtrain.  I have been following his advice since getting absolutely gassed from my formerly strenuous workouts.

 

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

Well, no recuperation without hangups I guess. Still have lots of trouble to lift the arm sideways, and today the therapist on deck said the spinatus and infraspinatus muscles responsible for abduction didn't show much work; apparently I'm using all sorts of muscles but those for the movement. He hoped I didn't rupture anything, though that should have shown up in the CT scans if it happened in the accident.

Told him I still occasionally got a bit of a numb feeling in the area he indicated, particularly when working on abduction like right then. Might just be some slight nerve damage from surgery that will get better over time, but of course I might have torn something in a careless move afterwards, too; I've had all sorts of transient minor pains in the last weeks, though nothing actually got worse in the course. Guess I'll see the doctor over it. 

Posted

Good luck with it, hope it is just transient physical therapy pain.

OTOH, it seems that I have avoided any adverse consequences. There is some pain while moving arm in the extreme positions, but nothing out of the ordinary. Two weeks of physical therapy now.

Posted

Glad its making progress, but its going to take time.

I remember I tore a ligament as a kid playing rugby, too bloody months for it to heel. I ironically the best therapy for the arm was playing computer games.

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted
On 11/24/2020 at 6:32 PM, bojan said:

Banshee, it is clearly infectious. :D

It clearly is. Sent belated Christmas greetings to a girl I hadn't seen for a year on Sunday, and we wound up making a date for yesterday. Except while she's on her way to my place, somebody ignores her right of way and runs into her car, and she ends up in hospital with a head laceration instead. She's more pissed about the car which her granddad had just fixed for her at the start of the year. She wrote me "2020 gotta end".

 

Posted

The odds of me ever visiting Germany on vacation are dwindling with every FFZ post. You guys are making Australia look safe by comparison.

 

Posted

I'll take my chances with the drop bears, thankyouverymuch. That threat can be mitigated with basic arms and armor.

While the traditional Aussie armament is the SMLE, with the exception of angry water buffalo, threats from the animal kingdom are resolved nicely with the shotty. #9 shot for spiders, snakes, and such. #4 shot for drop bears, pugilistic roos, etc. 00 buck for bikers and anyone wearing a mohawk.

  • 4 weeks later...
Posted
On 12/16/2020 at 6:45 PM, BansheeOne said:

Well, no recuperation without hangups I guess. Still have lots of trouble to lift the arm sideways, and today the therapist on deck said the spinatus and infraspinatus muscles responsible for abduction didn't show much work; apparently I'm using all sorts of muscles but those for the movement. He hoped I didn't rupture anything, though that should have shown up in the CT scans if it happened in the accident.

Told him I still occasionally got a bit of a numb feeling in the area he indicated, particularly when working on abduction like right then. Might just be some slight nerve damage from surgery that will get better over time, but of course I might have torn something in a careless move afterwards, too; I've had all sorts of transient minor pains in the last weeks, though nothing actually got worse in the course. Guess I'll see the doctor over it. 

So I had an MRI on Monday, and there are in fact all sorts of soft tissue lesions in the shoulder. Most severe are a suspected Pulley and SLAP Type II respectively, i. e. the long biceps tendon has dislocated inward, and the glenoid labrum around the joint which anchors the tendon might be torn a bit - though they told me at the hospital it was typically either a bone fracture or that. Apparently this explains my limited ability to rotate the arm outward, though not the continued trouble to lift it sideward, which points toward additional nerve damage. 

Doctor has asked me to get a more detailed surgery report from the hospital and will present me to a more specialized colleague next week. It's all no great discomfort - I have largely regained the ability to take things from high shelves, wash my hair etc. with the left hand, and there's only pain after therapeutic exercise. My biggest complaints are that I can't put the hand on my hip unaided, and not lie on my left side for long due to the lack of cushioning of the shoulder by the atrophied supra-spinatus muscle. Overall minor issues, though obviously I'd like them to be rectified. 

  • 1 month later...
Posted

Catching up, after some delay due to my intermittent COVID quarantine I saw the other doctor three weeks ago. He thought the MRI had been rather overinterpreted by the radiologist, inquired whether the shoulder had been athroscopically examined, then enthusiastically suggested to put me into a semi-stationary rehab program at his former hospital which he and his colleague used to run rather than continue physio as before. Everyone has his pet projects I guess. He said he was going to talk to the hospital and my employer's insurance, then give me a call. 

So three weeks went by and I started to wonder whether I had misunderstood, and I was the one supposed to call. But I was busy at work introducing a new CRM system, and most of all without anybody therapying my shoulder it improved considerably; the inflammation of the synovial bursa also diagnosed in the MRI seemed to subside, and I was finally able to lie on the left side again, put the hand on my hip and clasp it behind my back. So I put off asking back at the practice until this week where I spent my remaining vacation days from last year. 

Sure enough the doctor called me back the next day and was terribly apologetic for not having continued to pursue the issue, but said he was going to follow up on the possibility of surgery tomorrow. Which was not what I had originally understood; surgeons gonna surgeon I guess. I swiftly mentioned I felt much better already, and with some relief he asked me to come in on Friday to have another look. Where I demonstrated my regained operability, and he said "well, no surgery then". To which I happily replied "God no, never change a running system".

So I just got a new physio prescription, but due to tight capacities at the therapy practice the next appointment is another four weeks out. Which is just as well, that way the shoulder can improve further without any professionals interfering. 😁 

Posted

I'm glad to hear it's improving. Generally, I try to stay away from the butcher unless absolutely necessary.

  • 2 months later...
Posted (edited)

Well nobody got hurt, but my company could really have done without Monday this week. While we are having a video conference in the morning, two fuses blow at the office, and the sockets in the rooms on one side of the corridor lose power. It's not clear why, so the fuses just get pushed back in. One snaps back out right again, along with a third. This time there are some loud bangs, and two PCs start smoldering. At this point everything is powered down. Electrician shows up, and after extended measurements says the likely culprit is a short in the water fountain cooler/bubbler. The surge protection connectors did their job and gave their lives to save the PCs except the two burnt-out wrecks which were on unprotected sockets.

We remain on half power the following day and out of work on Wednesday morning when the electrical company returns for full assessment and repair. The few tenths of seconds between the short and the fuses blowing was apparently enough for the resulting surge to damage the terminals feeding the circuits from the main line, so those get replaced. Our IT guy procures replacements for the killed PCs and anti-surge connectors (for all devices this time).

The other essential machine that's dead besides the cooler is the coffee automat next to it. The technician who comes in yesterday hopes it's just the internal fuse, but when he puts in a new one it burns through right again, so he takes the whole thing with him for further checks. I guess it's possible the fault actually occurred in there, but after our CEO went on an immediate offensive against the contractor servicing the cooler, demanding their insurance cover our material and operational losses, and them of course going into automatic defense, I wasn't going to point that out to the guy too loudly.

Edited by BansheeOne
Posted

Many years ago when I was working for a very large defense contractor, in the break room I noticed there was soot going up the wall above the wall receptacle where a vending machine was plugged in. Knowing my employer, I carefully pulled the cable out of the receptacle (yeah, it was warm about a foot from the plug), then went to notify the facility guy.

As you would expect, no email blast went out, no sign put up, no call to the building owner, no call to the vending machine company. IIRC correctly the vending machine company replaced the cable (no revenue!) and plugged the machine back in without incident. The soot stayed on the wall for months.

That was one data point on the way to my theory that people in organizations fall into adult and child categories, with a Pareto-like distribution.

 

  • 2 years later...
Posted

I guess it's typical for major joint injuries to keep themselves being remembered. Had no issues with the shoulder for the last two-and-a-half years other than some tension in front sometimes, which I put down to slightly dislocated tendons diagnosed in that last MRI. Same about five weeks ago again; except it doesn't go away this time, but builds up over several days until the Friday before my summer holidays, at which point every move hurts. Then something gives, and the pain gets better, but range of movement is somewhat restricted. I'm off for the weekend to attend my youngest niece' baptism (awesome event BTW), then see a doctor the next week.

X-ray doesn't show any problems, and I get another physio prescription. Meanwhile the condition gets sometimes better, sometimes worse, but generally feels like about three month after the original surgery. Last Friday I have another MRI which shows some cartilage detachment at the top of the humerus head, and I get a referral to the hospital which did the surgery for concurrent evaluation. Let's see what they say; surgeons gonna surgeon, probably. OTOH, all the tendons seem largely intact and functional, which was my main worry.

Posted
4 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

I guess it's typical for major joint injuries to keep themselves being remembered. Had no issues with the shoulder for the last two-and-a-half years other than some tension in front sometimes, which I put down to slightly dislocated tendons diagnosed in that last MRI. Same about five weeks ago again; except it doesn't go away this time, but builds up over several days until the Friday before my summer holidays, at which point every move hurts. Then something gives, and the pain gets better, but range of movement is somewhat restricted. I'm off for the weekend to attend my youngest niece' baptism (awesome event BTW), then see a doctor the next week.

X-ray doesn't show any problems, and I get another physio prescription. Meanwhile the condition gets sometimes better, sometimes worse, but generally feels like about three month after the original surgery. Last Friday I have another MRI which shows some cartilage detachment at the top of the humerus head, and I get a referral to the hospital which did the surgery for concurrent evaluation. Let's see what they say; surgeons gonna surgeon, probably. OTOH, all the tendons seem largely intact and functional, which was my main worry.

Age :(

Posted (edited)
6 hours ago, BansheeOne said:

I guess it's typical for major joint injuries to keep themselves being remembered. Had no issues with the shoulder for the last two-and-a-half years other than some tension in front sometimes, which I put down to slightly dislocated tendons diagnosed in that last MRI. Same about five weeks ago again; except it doesn't go away this time, but builds up over several days until the Friday before my summer holidays, at which point every move hurts. Then something gives, and the pain gets better, but range of movement is somewhat restricted. I'm off for the weekend to attend my youngest niece' baptism (awesome event BTW), then see a doctor the next week.

X-ray doesn't show any problems, and I get another physio prescription. Meanwhile the condition gets sometimes better, sometimes worse, but generally feels like about three month after the original surgery. Last Friday I have another MRI which shows some cartilage detachment at the top of the humerus head, and I get a referral to the hospital which did the surgery for concurrent evaluation. Let's see what they say; surgeons gonna surgeon, probably. OTOH, all the tendons seem largely intact and functional, which was my main worry.

Get well soon. I broke my arm in May and still working to get back my full range of movement after they had to put together the radial head from 6 pieces.

Edited by seahawk
Posted

My wife is suffering--literally--from two dead, collapsed, out-of-position disks as well as a form of scoliosis which literally twists the vertebrae about 15 degrees out of sync.  The surgeons were preparing for two surgeries--one anterior, one posterior--to replace the disks with cages, add a plate and four screwed brackets to restore alignment and proper distance.  The procedure would open up the nerve and spinal column passages to enable movement and relieve the constant pain.  The procedures are involved but fairly common.

Yesterday, the insurance company said no.

No we have to wait for the letter, file and appeal, and also work with our secondary insurance to get the go ahead.  At LEAST another month, probably two, and maybe a hard no at the end.

Posted

As someone who has a lighter form of scoliosis and straightening of the cervical spine not requiring surgery (yet, anyway), but once in a while is experiencing the effects of those passages being restricted, I totally understand how that would piss anyone off. 

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