For the past 20 months, I've been dealing with a random, increasingly painful issue with my right shoulder. At first we thought it was a strain, then a pinched nerve, then a rotator cuff injury, then who knows what. I hadn't been all that gung ho about finding the source, because it only flared up once every two to three months, and then sometimes only was a mild pain. Occasionally it developed into a pain so severe that all I could do was sit and wait for the agony to subside 12-18 hours later, but that wasn't the norm.

Over the Christmas break, however, that changed. From December 28 through January 4 (my birthday), the pain in my shoulder not only flared up, but got worse and worse as time went on, to the point that we went to the Urgent Care clinic on Sunday afternoon of my birthday (as opposed to going to the ER) to try to get some pain relief. One shot of Tramadol and a Vicodin prescription later, I was able to get some sleep and went to see my doctor the next morning.

That was the point where I decided that I was fed up with this and it was time to get aggressive in treatment.

Now, I had already been to see an orthopedist on December 19, who took x-rays of the shoulder (no bond damage noted) and gave me a steroid shot and hoped it would go away. On January 5, we scheduled two MRI exams, one for my shoulder and one for my neck (c-spine). I also scheduled a follow-up with my orthopedist. The c-spine MRI didn't show anything, and the shoulder MRI showed a possile tear in the labrum. My orthopedist reviewed the MRI scans and scheduled another MRI of my shoulder, this time with contrast, so they could see the labrum more clearly.

Today, I finally got the results back from the third MRI, which I took over a week ago. The MRI shows a definite tear in the labrum and the doc wants to scope me to repair it. I'm scheduled to go in next week to discuss further.

One one hand, I'm relieved to finally see that there is something wrong in the shoulder that has been causing the pain. On the other, I'm really not all that crazy about surgery. Over the next week, I'm going to continue to do research on that type of surgery so that I can have a somewhat intelligent discussion with the surgeon about the options. Timing is a big concern for me, as I've got a trip to Seattle planned for March 1-4, and I don't want to necessarily go under the knife before traveling, but I also don't know what kind of risk I'm taking by waiting until mid-March to do the surgery.

Lots of questions still, and I won't know a lot more until next week's appointment, but at least we can point to something that *is* wrong and hopefully has a fix so I can get out of this pattern of worrying about doing something to aggravate my shoulder and end up in another pain episode or not. More details as they become available!