I wrote a little bit about this on August 27, so bear with me and I’ll get to the Parkinson’s connection.
Getting to the diagnosis
Coming home from the Arctic and minding my own business while picking up my (small) carryon after going through security, I blew out something in my right arm. Following (in today’s Medicare world) a meeting with our internist and then an x-ray followed by an MRI and ultimately a consult with our ortho (we have both used him before), I learn about 4 weeks later that I have partially torn the tendon that attaches my right bicep to the right elbow.
I also learned (through the blessing and curse of looking up medical stuff on Google) that
- this type of injury almost always hits middle-aged men (probably from working out with weights that are too heavy for one’s age)
- for surgical repair to work, it needs to be done within a couple of weeks of the injury
- if the tendon is completely torn, the pain goes away in a few days and your arm can live a pretty normal life (without the weight-lifting).
After a few weeks of physical therapy, my therapist confirms what I already knew: it wasn’t getting any better and wasn’t going to. So I schedule another appointment with the ortho, but before that happens (Here’s where the PD starts to creep back in), I trip over a lane marker while crossing the street and hit the street pretty hard and then, the next morning, while putting a dish away, I get another searing pain in my arm.
Surgery is the only option
Back at the ortho a few days later, he confirms it is not getting better, and says surgery is the only option, but says he wants another MRI first just to make sure. He then starts to explain the surgical options. The first option involves drilling through a bone in the arm to reattach the tendon (and he freely admits he has never done it on a woman and asks if there is any osteoporosis to worry about). At this point, Mr. Twitchy asks if he can ask a stupid question: why can’t he just go in and snip what’s left to the tendon. The MD laughs and says that IS the second option and he was worried he would have to talk us into it. We elect option snip. A few days later I get the next MRI (saying to myself that my arm is hurting less and less). A day or so later the new MRI result shows that the tendon is now completely detached. The ortho confirms no surgery is necessary as I have now managed, through the fall and the dish, to have completed the snipping surgery by myself. And the arm is increasingly normal every day.
Sometimes I amaze me.
What does Parkinson’s have to do with this?
The other more general PD links here are (1) the physical therapist thought the muscle tightness caused by PD was impeding recovery through therapy and (2) more generally, it can take a LONG time for Medicare patients to get stuff taken care of, even with great doctors who know how to pull scheduling strings. In retrospect, it took 4 months to get everything resolved. That meant 4 months of little or no exercise which is not good for someone with Parkinson’s. My goal now is to finally get back to my normal routine, without pain. Yippee!
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