More (small) challenges
Three trips to the doctors this month have delivered all kinds of profound diagnoses.
Regarding the shoulder issue I told you about recently: Six weeks of physical therapy proved remarkably helpful in reducing pain and returning my ability to make it through a swim workout. Yet an occasion ache remains and certain movements continue to hurt. This prompted my orthopedist, Dr. Michael Repine, to schedule an MRI. That test showed a two centimeter tear in my labrum, the topmost tendon of the rotator cuff.
The good news is that it can be fixed. The only option to do so, as supported by Dr. Sharon Wetherall, is a complete detachment and reattachment of the labrum.
The bad news is that recovery time is four to six months for normal daily activity function. A year before full strength is returned.
The second piece of medical news started off a positive note. Since I began running on a prosthesis sixteen years ago, Stumpie has suffered from what I’ve come to consider a circulation issue, causing me to stop and dangle and/or reboot to subdue the pain and restore blood-flow. Though four different prosthetists have built me run legs over the years, the pain has been relatively consistent and I’ve always presumed the problem was some sort of fit issue; perhaps Stumpie is oddly shaped or constructed and, hence, a difficult fit…or something.
My current prosthetist, Erik Shaffer of A Step Ahead Prosthetics and Orthotics, proposed the problem could be vascular insufficiency. No one, professional or otherwise, had ever mentioned this possibility, nor had the thought ever crossed my mind.
Sharon highly recommended Dr. Nelson Mozia for a consult. He prescribed a CT angiogram to inspect the integrity the veins and arteries in Stumpie. The initial results were just what I was hoping for: both the veins and arteries are severely occluded. This is good news because we’ve finally found the cause, which means we can do something about it!
Well, after Dr. Mozio consulted with an interventional radiologist and a CT radiologist, they concluded that the occlusions were so severe and widespread that a fix was out of the question. Angioplasty will not work due to the severity and a surgical procedure could result in an above knee amputation if it were to go awry. I ruled that one out immediately.
The one non-surgical option is a blood-thinning medication called Plavix which might help much needed oxygen reach those little Stumpie muscles. In the short term I’ve opted to give this a go. I’m told it takes ten days for full effect—on Sunday’s 23 mile run, day 7 of the medication, I dangled and rebooted many times. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see…
In the meantime, I’ll be getting a second opinion.
The final trip to the doc was not for me but for the family doctor—Sharon. The ultrasound showed that there is indeed an embryo growing in her womb! Unquestionably the biggest challenge of the three.
