Rhonda Bracey: At Random

We travelled to Bunbury yesterday for my shoulder injections and to do a bit of shopping. After an excellent and cheap lunch at the Marlston Chinese Restaurant in Bunbury, we drove on to Mandurah to stay overnight at the just-opened Sebel Hotel, on the spot where the old Peninsula Hotel used to be.

The Sebel is doing some excellent opening deals at the moment. It was my husband’s birthday last Sunday, so why not? We got one of the bigger rooms for an opening special price of $122 for the night — an EXCELLENT price for a 4+ star hotel.

The Sebel Mandurah

The fittings and finishings were what I’d expect from this star level hotel, and quite minimalist as is the fashion these days. And although there’s no restaurant in the hotel, there’s one in the same building on the ground floor. We didn’t eat there though — instead we walked along the boardwalk into town and had a light meal at Murphy’s Irish Pub, followed by some good music from Billy Neal(e), a one-man-band guy.

More photos of the room and its fittings are here: http://community.webshots.com/album/560805818gSdWUQ?start=120

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.)