HDr’s bloggers expose more than their souls

Acute calcific tendonitis. A medical misnomer if ever I’ve heard one, it is not cute at all. Although becoming a patient surely renders the toughest of docs more empathetic, sometimes it goes too far.

So far I’ve clocked up a laparoscopy, a knee arthroscopy, two LETZ, an excision of Morton’s neuroma, a mastectomy, reconstruction, and various prosthetic swappings, but last week nature dealt a cruel blow…

You probably imagine that my Hospital Dr fee for ranting about cyclists and vegetarians funds my Jimmy Choo habit, and well it might, if they were in very poor nick, and I bought them on eBay. In fact, gasp, I have a day job.

It’s a great job, sometimes I get to stick needles into premiership footballers, and I think there’s at least one woman out there who would pay me handsomely so to do. The majority of my therapeutic interventions, however, is injecting subacromial spaces, and needling supraspinatus calcific deposits. That’s the background out of the way, back to the drama.

Ten days ago, I spent five hours shooting sixteen shrieking twelve year olds. In a photographic sense, you understand, although the alternative seemed more attractive as the afternoon went on. Sunday morning, I woke up with a niggly right shoulder, and by Monday I could not abduct my arm at all. I had some impingement bursitis injected over fifteen years ago, and had not had a days trouble with it subsequently, but this was a totally different level of pain.

You have read the catalogue of operations, and I have had two children, but I can safely say that this was the worst pain I have ever experienced. Monday afternoon I got an x-ray on it, as the non-professional would say.

There, nestling in the musculotendonous junction of infraspinatus, were three foci of calcification, each about the size of an ibuprofen tablet, which is ironic, as anti-inflammatories did sod all for the pain. Another sleepless night, and finally I can understand why the pain drives some patients to casualty.

I spent a good proportion of the night figuring out how I might be able to inject it, to no avail. Tuesday lunchtime I saw Andrew, the orthopaedic surgeon. To my enormous relief, he thought an injection wouldn’t do the job, although he did ask me if I had considered trying to do it myself. It’s not that I don’t trust my colleagues…

So, last Wednesday, I had an arthroscopic subacromial decompression and removal of the calcium. Even immediately post-op, it hurt less than before. The next day Andrew came to tell me how much fun the operation had been. Click on this link and have a look yourself.