It's a good thing I'm taking most of August off from photography anyway. Otherwise, I'd have a whole lotta rescheduling going on right now. My right shoulder (a.k.a. my "shooting" shoulder) started hurting a couple weeks ago after a flag football game. A little sore for a couple days, but no biggie. Then after throwing all game last week, the pain got a little more biggie. It got worse each day this week to the point where I was loadin' up on Ibuprofen multiple times a day (we're talkin' a steady snack of pills throughout the day), but it was helping less and less. Yesterday and today I couldn't raise my arm above elbow height. One word. Pain. Ful. As a grown man, I'm not afraid to admit I nearly shed a tear on a couple occasions when I inadvertently moved the wrong way. I finally sucked it up and listened to Kylie and made a doctor's appointment today since the I'm-a-man-and-I'm-stubborn-and-I-don't-need-no-stinkin'-doctor-'cause-this-thing-will-get-better-on-its-own approach that I was employing clearly wasn't working. DIagnosis? Calcific Tendinits. If you're medical terminology deciphering skills are as rusty [read: non-existent] as mine, that means calcium has built up in the rotator cuff tendon where it attaches bone causing inflammation in the tendon. Further layman's description = oouuuucccchhhhh.

The silver lining here is that no surgery is likely req'd. I was a bit nervous about that since it kept getting worse by the day and all I could think about was that recovery time would trounce all over upcoming photography sessions starting in September. The extra polished silver lining? I was partially right in my this-thing-will-get-better-on-its-own diagnosis. Turns out no one's really sure what causes this to occur, but in most cases it eventually works itself out and the body dissolves the calcium in a matter of weeks or a month or two and replaces is with healthy tendon tissue. In rare cases, arthroscopic surgery is required to seal the recovery deal, but that's typically unlikely. (Hmm... since I started that last sentence with "In rare cases..." the "but that's typically unlikely" seems a bit redundant an unnecessary, doesn't it?). Generally doctors just try to make the pain more manageable until God's design kicks in and the body heals itself. So, I got a big ol' shot of Cortizone in the shoulder today. The physician's assistant spewed some more medical jargon at me that - when I asked her to give it to me in English - she basically said it's not uncommon for some people to have a temporary adverse reaction to the shot where the pain actually increases for a day or two before it gets a lot better.

Maybe I'm a bit naive and looking for more of a medical miracle here when i heard the word Cortizone, but I was expecting to be able to pick up my 5lb camera & lens a couple hours later (hey, that kinda healing happened in Varsity Blues, why not me?), but so far not so much. The doc also said to lay low on the shoulder use for a while. Umm, I'm moving into the new house this weekend. Oops.