I seem to launch from disaster to disaster, last night my son, who's nearly 5, ran to give me a hug, but missed and strangled me, this sent my neck into spasm fairly speedily and it's evident today that it's hurt the ribs and my right hip too. The neck spasm was so bad we decided to go to the ER, in the hope that maybe a big dose of something might be able to stop it getting worse and turn the corner to getting better.
Unfortunately I think we were deceived, we only realised once we left that we'd actually seen an ARNP, not a doctor, she was wearing a long white coat, when she came into the room, she introduced herself by name very quickly, so by the time we perked up to that someone was there the introduction was done, we were a little concerned whilst we were there that she wasn't getting it, when my husband let her know about one of the conditions I suffer from she didn't seem to take it as significant, when we know full well that it is. I'm allergic to antinflamatories, so she prescribed prednisone, which I'd only even heard of because Sunny mentioned it recently, so I wasn't desperately keen on taking it, but decided I'd better give it a try and I think it did help quite a lot, so now I have a 5 day course.
I've nothing against ARNPs, just that you should know who you are seeing, I've seen it a couple of times recently where no one makes it clear that you are seeing someone who isn't a doctor and you have to dig to find out who they are, once I couldn't make an appointment to see my primary care doctor and they said I could see someone else and failed to mention it was the ARNP - who in this instance couldn't help me and I knew that she couldn't.
Although I'm in a lot of pain, by my neck going into spasm I seem to have stopped having some of the neurological side effects I was already having from the underlying condition, problem is, if once they stop spasming if the ligaments are further damaged/weakened then those things will get worse, but it doesn't appear to be an urgent situation and I already knew I was going to have to go see one - my PT was saying if you ever experience numbness in your legs you need to see a neurologist and I was all happy and saying I hadn't, I couldn't believe how forgetful I am, literally the next day I've got numb spots, but I've had them for so long without progression, I'd forgotten, so I'll ask her when I see her who she recommends.
The shoulder problem I mentioned last week is still troublesome, but again, the immobility from this has meant it has been less painful today. Today I was supposed to have an MRI, with contrast medium injected into the joint, but unfortunately despite my best efforts I ended up not being able to go through with it, which was pretty distressing, I dislike joint injections and maybe I wouldn't have been able to manage that in my shoulder anyway, but I think I probably could, though it being so close to the head and thus not being able to be disjoint from it might have been more of a problem than I realised, but lieing there expecting to get that done and then knowing that the next thing is to stick me inside a narrow noisy tube when I'm moderately claustrophobic turned out to be too much. The doctor has been entirely unhelpful and hasn't even talked to me, he wouldn't allow an MRI without contrast even though the radiologist thought it would be helpful, the doctors approach is to send me back to PT - when the PT sent me to the doctor because we needed more input, so sending me back to the PT would need to come with more instructions to be a reasonable course of action, so I guess we'll be starting over with another doctor, thankfully there is no shortage of shoulder doctors in the area.
So that's my crazy life!
Cheers Anne