Rhonda Bracey: At Random

I had to have a steroid injection in the bursa of both shoulders yesterday. My memories of taking my Mum to get a Cortisone injection in her elbow (?) several years ago were causing a bit of anxiety — Mum said the pain of the shot was worse than the pain she had the shot for!

Well, something’s changed since then.

Initially the clinic said they wouldn’t do both shoulders as I would have limited movement for two days — I’d have to have one now and come back for the other. After a little rant about already travelling an hour each way to have these shots and explaining that my doctor said ‘two shoulders’, and that I wasn’t willing to travel again unless ABSOLUTELY necessary, the assistant went back to the doctor who said she’d do them both.

They prepped my shoulders with some local anaesthetic, then after a couple of minutes the doctor said I could get up. I asked when she was going to do the injections and she said she’d already done them! Seems she follows the local almost immediately with the steroid injection — and I felt almost nothing except the pin prick of the local anaesthetic injection. That was easy!

I walked out of the clinic within 15 minutes, much to my husband’s surprise — he thought I hadn’t even had the procedure. We went to lunch and I waited for the local to wear off and the pain to kick in. After 30 mins, nothing; after an hour, nothing; after six hours, nothing; after 12 hours; nothing; after 24 hours, nothing. It’s now been close to 30 hours since I had the injections and I have had no pain whatsoever. That said, I haven’t done anything strenuous (as per the advice given by the clinic people), and I haven’t needed to lift my arms over my head.

But so far, so good! After all the gloom and doom stories — and the reluctance of some people to talk about the likelihood of pain except with enough hints to indicate there WOULD be pain — everything appears to be hunky dory. I’m pretty happy about that.

(And in breaking news, I just learned that a very good friend of mine has come through major surgery OK, which is an absolute relief. My shoulders were a very minor blip on the radar compared to the procedure she’s just had.)