I don’t think I would be tempting fate if I say up till now I’ve been pretty lucky with my health and for that I’m deeply grateful, realizing that this is due to good fortune and good genes as much as any merit or action of my own. Indeed, until comparatively recently I would have to admit that it was despite any action of my own.
That is not to say I am unacquainted with the suffering and pain of those around me and of those I hold dear, who have been challenged by serious ill health. I am filled with admiration for those people who manage to bear the pain of ill health and suffering with good humour, while still managing to function as really nice human beings. It makes me wonder how I would bear up under such circumstances and judging by a recent experience I’ve had, I fear the indications are I would not acquit myself too well. And you couldn’t even call what ailed me serious.....
Last year I had to spend about six months in Los Angeles. Having rented a short term apartment and full of good intentions I started looking around for a nearby gym where I could keep myself in some sort of shape. I found a nice little one just around the corner from the flat and negotiated a reasonable monthly fee with the personable lady who ran it, without getting swagged by some outrageous “joiner’s fee” as you do in some places I could mention.
After a few weeks something happened to knock all my good intentions the way they often go whenever I travel away from home (have you noticed how that one goes?). One day I felt a pain in my left shoulder. No worries I thought, must’ve overdone it in the gym the day before. I’ll give it a rest for a day or so. The which I did. After three days had passed it hadn’t gone away but only bothered me if I made the wrong movement, like stretching out to the side. Then I got a stab of acute pain. Notta problem, it’ll go away in time, meantime I can give the gym a miss. And so weeks and months went by, I didn’t go to the gym and the shoulder didn’t get any better. In fact it was getting worse. All kinds of movements would catch me and I’d never know when to expect it. I finally decided to go for a therapeutic massage. In Hong Kong for years I had treatment from an absolute Korean master of acupressure. This man was a marvel. So when I spotted a Korean massage clinic in the vicinity I thought my luck was in. Big mistake, they were brutes. All pain and no therapy I emerged bruised, moxibusted and worse off than before.
Now things got really painful whenever I made the wrong move. Reaching into the back seat of the car was a killer and by the time I came to leave LA I couldn’t even reach across the car to shut the passenger door. Finally after four months of this it finally dawned I would really have to do something. The question was what? I managed to defer any decision on that by telling myself I’d wait until I left LA and get a handle on it in Hong Kong or Bali. I figured something like this would not get put to rights in one session and the bill for anything half good in in LA would cost me the other arm and a leg to boot.
On my way back I went to a specialist in Hong Kong, a man with a huge reputation. Well, he might have been good once upon a time but nowadays he was worse than useless. In fact he was the kind of doc I really despise. The walls were covered with commendations from various Olympic Committees this guy was more into sports politics and cash than he was into medicine. He charged like a wounded buffalo and gave me five minutes of his time. He said it was a frozen shoulder (brilliant!), that it might come right in two years or so, but then again it might not. He said buy a can of Campbell’s soup and swing your arm across the body and then from side to side and see how it goes. He gave me a weeks worth of anti-inflammatories and was off to lunch and I was about $300 the poorer.
Back in Bali I pondered on my situation and was feeling pretty down about it. It seemed nobody really knew much about frozen shoulders. It hits many people over 40 and opinion was divided about whether or not it was curable.Learn to live with it some people said. Meantime my arm movement was severely restricted. I couldn’t raise it above 45% in front of me and out to the side even less. I had in fact lost about 70% of mobility. My inactivity over the past few months had caused me to put on a lot of weight. I’d lost any motivation to go to the gym and the idea of resuming yoga classes back in Bali made me wince at the prospect. Downward dog in my condition was an excruciating absurdity. I envisioned the rest of my life as one of increasing decrepitude.
Something needed to be done and my wife, God bless her, tired of my wallowing in my black mood and to get me trucking again, booked me ten sessions with Luci, who does a sort of physio-cum-Pilates with a few hours of sports rehab massage from Australian-trained Ketut thrown in. All this pelvic floor stuff is a bit tedious at first but I knew enough about Pilates to know the pay off is about as good as it gets if you can stay the course.The breakthrough with my arm came with a very simple exercise. All it entailed was lying on my right side with my right arm extended and placing my left arm on top of it. Then slowly bringing my left arm over as far as it could go over to the left. At first it barely got to a vertical halfway point. With the third attempt something shifted and the muscles instead of fighting each other released and I could go through the pain and got a lot further over.That’s all it took! From then, with a bit of what’s called S&P (don’t ask me what that means, some sort of muscle resistance) things started improving rapidly.Three weeks on and I’ve regained 80% of my mobility and almost a year now can see the day when total movement will be restored.
All in all it has been a salutary exercise.I found out that I am addicted to good health and don’t make a good invalid. Even a small thing like this casts me down in the dumps for months and like many men, who don’t often have much wrong with them physically, I don’t handle it well when things don’t work. I compound the problem by inaction. The lesson for such as me is not to wallow and take action promptly. In the case of muscular and joint problems, don’t accept anything less than full recovery without a fight and keep looking for the doctor or practitioner who finds what works for you. Abandon those that don’t, fast. Treat surgery very much as a last resort. In my case it was a very simple movement, that’s all it took and I’d hazard a guess it would be the same for many others with a similar problem.
Bouquets to Luci and Ketut, who work in tandem and make a great team. Both are extremely dedicated practitioners in their complementary and respective fields and their charges are reasonable. I highly recommend them to anybody looking for a genuine and permanent solution rather than some of the more expensive “package” options on offer in some quarters in Bali.
Luci and Ketut can be contacted via Ketut Gede Putrawan on h/p 0812 383 4119.
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