Hope and Tears

About the time Mom passed, my shoulder took a downhill turn. With time, shots, and physical therapy, it had been improving, although it was never pain free nor did I have full range of motion after my injury on June 26th. But I had hope. Beginning in mid-October, however, that hope was tested, tried, and tortured by a surprising onslaught of pain and a diminishing ability to move my arm. 

Fast forward to December 1st. At my previous orthopedic appointment, Dr. Culpepper had told me I could get an MRI with a simple phone call. "Call me and I'll order it." So when I could no longer take a short swim, when I could no longer wash under my left arm, when I could no longer write notes on the board at school more than a few inches above my head, I thought knew the time had come. 

I had the MRI on December 1st and my appointment with Culpepper on December 7th. He said stuff like bicep tendinitis, arthritis of the acromion joint, a bone spur of that acromion joint, something about a bursa, and a partial rotator cuff tear. "Not a full thickness tear," he said, and that was good, that he saw lots of MRIs of shoulders that are much worse, and that it was still possible it could heal without surgery. But it looks more likely it will need some work. When I asked him why the bicep tendons were still inflamed after twenty-two weeks, he said they might never clear up. !!!!!! You could have knocked me over with a sneeze. But, he added, that could be fixed also.

"I'm not just another sixty-one year old man who wants to be able to wash out from under his arm," I threw in. "I'm an all-day swimmer. Can you get me back to that?"

My sister spoke. "But you're not going to be swimming twenty-three miles again are you?"  A nurse, she had made the appointment with me.

"Well, maybe twenty or at least fifteen," I answered looking at the doc in a pleading fashion.

"I can't guarantee that," Culpepper responded. "But that's what we will work for. That will be our aim."

Then he said he couldn't do anything to it until January anyway, so he suggested another shot, and I come back in four weeks and we go from there. I asked my sister what I should do, partly because I didn't want the shot.

"Get the shot," she said, "It might do the trick. Why not?"

"Because it costs 240 bucks," I said in exasperation. 

Carol looked at Culpepper as if to ask, "Really?" He shrugged and said, "He'd know that better than me," pointing my way.

"Well, you have to pay to play," she shot back at me.

"I never had to pay before."

"You do now. Get the shot. Why not?"

"I'm not sure it works," I answered, "and besides, I'm a sissy and it hurts."

"Get the shot. It's the most conservative thing we can do now and it just might work. If it doesn't then we know."

So my sister talked me into the shot, and what does she do?

"I'm not staying for that," she says and walks out leaving me alone with the needle. 

When it was all over, we strolled into the parking lot, and she was telling me what a good report that was, that now we had time to think, to plan the next move, maybe check with another orthopedist. It is not urgent to get a quick repair if it is "not a full thickness tear," she kept telling me, "not a full thickness tear." She is a nurse, retired but a nurse by training, calling, and nature. She had researched and was/is trying to help me. She is good like that. I was trying to wrap my head around it all, trying to believe. I guess hope is back or trying to return; I just have to be persuaded of it, to embrace it, to believe.

I suppose I am a bit disappointed. I was desirous of more certainty, yearning for a definite: 'This is what we have to do.' Now we are still stuck in that limbo stage where we have been for the past five months. But my sister is helping me now and that is a huge plus.

We left, in Mom's truck, and drove by our old residence, a duplex, at the corner of Leflore Avenue and Tenth Street. Carol was six months old when Roger Hodge moved us to 422 West Harding. She has no memories of living on Leflore. We rode by twice so I could show her where the four snapshot-like memories I have from then took place.

"Right there," I pointed at a spot beside the road. "I sat down and put my finger on the road and waited for a car to run over it." I was under three-years old. I have no explanation.

We made it to the bypass and headed back towards West Harding Street to Mom's where we both go almost every day.

"You do know you are not swimming this summer don't you?"

"Yes," I said somberly.

"You've accepted it?"

"Yes," I answered. But she didn't see the tears in my eyes.