The Results are In.
The PA called me yesterday with the results of my shoulder arthrogram and it is official: my shoulder sucks. He said that the diagnosis is multi-directional instability. That basically means that the capsule that holds the bones together has stretched, because of repeated injury, to the point that it has lost its effectiveness. There is also damage to the labrum. If you are seriously interested in reading about it this is a decent article about it.
So, I thought that because I was armed with this information, and I finally have a definitive diagnosis, that there would be a definitive cure. Yeah, right.
The PA that I talked to said that they don’t recommend surgery because it has a high failure rate. Meaning, you could go through 5-6 months of painful recovery post surgery and then end up re-injuring your shoulder anyhow. There is a 50% chance of that happening. The other course of treatment is to make like Hans and Frans and pump iron. Lots and lots and lots of it. This gives me a whopping 10% improvement in the odds. Whee.
The bitch of it all is that things I have read about the surgery gives it much more positive odds. So….what gives? Is what I read incorrect? Is the PA just uninformed? Are the surgeons that are covered by my insurance just behind the times on the procedures? Or, do they just want to save money?
It is incredibly frustrating. I am really hoping that I can get a clearer understanding of what I can do about this in the next few days.
