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adrian_turtle(On my way to the doctor's office, I learned that Newton is so persistent in not labeling their streets that people who live and work there don't know what major roads are called. I had written directions from the T station to the clinic, and I was carrying a GPS, and I still got lost twice. The trick seems to be to ask about landmarks, not about streets. "What street is this?" or "How can I get to Washington Street from here?" baffled them, but when I asked "Where is the Newton Wellesley Hospital?" they pointed helpfully.)
My shoulder pain seems to makes no sense because it comes from more than one source. I have tendonitis in at least 2 shoulder tendons, possibly 3. The top of the shoulder socket is starting to show arthritic changes. I may also have a pinched nerve in my neck causing referred pain. (Diagnosing this is likely to be unpleasant, but ignoring it and only treating the shoulder tendons is risky.) All those times a physical therapist found a tendon problem and set about treating it? There was another problematic tendon on the other side of the shoulder, to be aggravated by the treatment.
My rotator cuff is fine, and I do not need shoulder surgery. I hadn't thought I needed rotator cuff surgery, but it's one of those things that's generally nice to hear.
The nice people at Mount Auburn Radiology gave me pictures of my shoulder on a disk, for me to bring to the shoulder specialist at Newton-Wellesley. (Being a curious turtle, I looked at them on my own computer. I put the disk into my computer and it loaded its own image viewer. Then it let me look at an x-ray and MRI. From my perspective, it looks like a shoulder. I don't know enough to see really interesting things in the images.) The shoulder specialist had a hard time with it. As I understand it, the point of an MRI is that it collects a layered picture of soft tissue. The image viewer Mount Auburn Radiology sends out with their images does not let one look at the layers. It frustrated the new doctor, who was trying to see something specific deep in my shoulder. I would have thought the software for doctors to view MRIs was more standard than that. Now I'm supposed to get an MRI of my neck, and I need to get it at one of the hospitals in the new doctor's network of places where she can get images transferred directly to her electronically (which does not include anything geographically closer than Newton.) I hope this is not problematic for my insurance company, which has an entirely different notion of "in network" and "out of network."
My shoulder pain seems to makes no sense because it comes from more than one source. I have tendonitis in at least 2 shoulder tendons, possibly 3. The top of the shoulder socket is starting to show arthritic changes. I may also have a pinched nerve in my neck causing referred pain. (Diagnosing this is likely to be unpleasant, but ignoring it and only treating the shoulder tendons is risky.) All those times a physical therapist found a tendon problem and set about treating it? There was another problematic tendon on the other side of the shoulder, to be aggravated by the treatment.
My rotator cuff is fine, and I do not need shoulder surgery. I hadn't thought I needed rotator cuff surgery, but it's one of those things that's generally nice to hear.
The nice people at Mount Auburn Radiology gave me pictures of my shoulder on a disk, for me to bring to the shoulder specialist at Newton-Wellesley. (Being a curious turtle, I looked at them on my own computer. I put the disk into my computer and it loaded its own image viewer. Then it let me look at an x-ray and MRI. From my perspective, it looks like a shoulder. I don't know enough to see really interesting things in the images.) The shoulder specialist had a hard time with it. As I understand it, the point of an MRI is that it collects a layered picture of soft tissue. The image viewer Mount Auburn Radiology sends out with their images does not let one look at the layers. It frustrated the new doctor, who was trying to see something specific deep in my shoulder. I would have thought the software for doctors to view MRIs was more standard than that. Now I'm supposed to get an MRI of my neck, and I need to get it at one of the hospitals in the new doctor's network of places where she can get images transferred directly to her electronically (which does not include anything geographically closer than Newton.) I hope this is not problematic for my insurance company, which has an entirely different notion of "in network" and "out of network."
