Body Pain #Diabetes and What Do You Do?

In May 2014, I went to see a shoulder orthopedic surgeon because of suffering more than 6 months with some terrible shoulder pain. It had come on suddenly and kept getting worse as the months went by. The physician took some x-rays and basically, because of having type 1 diabetes she diagnosed me with frozen shoulder. She sent me to physical therapy.

The physical therapist worked with me once a week for about 3 or 4 months. In her opinion, she suspected that I didn’t have frozen shoulder, but that I was suffering from side effects from having 11 lymph nodes removed in the lumpectomy I had in 2004, and then from the mastectomy I had in August 2010. All the pain was in the right shoulder, the same side I had the mastectomy.

The exercises, stretching and strengthening I did upon the guidance of the physical therapist helped quite a bit. As a result, I had almost a year of virtually no pain. Then in January of this year, 2016, my shoulder started hurting again. I increased my stretching and started doing the exercises again. (Yes, I had fallen off the regular exercise plan!)

Three weeks ago I got my first membership at a gym here in Minnesota, the Minneapolis YWCA. Since I still have a fair amount of challenge from my recent broken ankle, I was very excited to start swimming. In my enthusiastic gung-ho way, I went swimming three times over a week and a half. Each time I noticed that after swimming one lap in the pool, about 50 yards, I was in serious shoulder pain. Shooting sharp pain. So I’d stop, and do a bunch of stretching, breathing into the pain, allowing it to release. I did that repeatedly. It seemed to ease some as I kept swimming.

Finally, I remembered that the orthopedic surgeon I saw for my ankle was a shoulder and knee specialist. I decided to call and make an appointment with him, to see what suggestions he had about my shoulder. Yesterday I went and saw him. He took another x-ray. And looked it over with me. Zero arthritis!!! Yes!!! And then he did a bunch of very cool tests to see if I had pain reverberating from my neck into my shoulder. Nope, that is not happening. He also tested my strength. That indicated I don’t have a rotator cuff tear. Whew! Glad to learn that!

He also doesn’t think I have frozen shoulder. I haven’t lost much range of motion. He is in agreement with the previous physical therapist, suspecting that my pain is perhaps connected to the various breast cancer surgeries I’ve had. He is a surgeon, but he likes to use a process of elimination, before opting for surgery. This is one of the key reasons I like Dr. Kayvon Riggi of Twin Cities Orthopedic. I feel very fortunate that the Universe guided me through this broken ankle to find him.

His assessment is that I am suffering from impingement syndrome. Step one was to give me a cortisone shot in my shoulder. Holy Toledo did that HURT!!! I even yelled out loud as they were giving it to me! And they did numb it! Still hurt like hell. I immediately couldn’t lift barely anything. I got home and put an ice pack on it and got in bed for a nap. Then about 5 hours after the shot, my blood sugars went haywire.

 

 

 

 

Here’s my continuous glucose monitor (cgm) for the past 24 hours. The yellow line is set at 160 mg/DL. You can see that I have been WELL above that line! I kept waking up all night, would test, look at the cgm and then bolus. I raised my basal rate by 10%, then by 20%. Now it’s raised by 50%. I kept doing rage correction boluses. Then this morning I changed my pump site and used a new bottle of insulin. Just covering all my bases. Slowly and surely the cortisone will work it’s way through my system. Dealing with these levels of highs isn’t so great on my mental facilities, luckily, I can lay low for the next week or so!

Breathing into it. Trusting the testing process. So far, the pain from the shot itself has calmed down. My shoulder doesn’t feel much better. Dr. Riggi told me that it will take 7 to 10 days to know if the cortisone shot will help. That will give us information about what step to take next. Dr. Riggi looked me straight in the eyes and asked me to promise that I will NOT swim until after I see him in 3 more weeks! I am to do NOTHING that causes direct shoulder pain!!! I agreed.

Thank goodness I CAN go biking! And I CAN do pool running in the deep end of the pool at the YWCA. And I can take Echo for long walks! I could focus on what I can’t do, but thankfully, I’ve learned that that doesn’t do me much good.

What about you? Have you ever dealt with issues like this? Turns out many of us have struggles like this. What have you done? How do you deal with it? I’d love to hear your insights. Realizing I’m not alone really helps me.

In wellness. Always.

Tags: Twin Cities Orthopedic, Kayvon Riggi, MD, impingement shoulder pain, frozen shoulder with diabetes, cortisone impact on blood sugar, cortisone and diabetes,