not that I was sleeping

The last couple of days have been exhausting, and I had thought it would do me good to sleep until midafternoon. The nice fellow called around 10, and at 10:20, I took my meds and went back to bed. Then at 10:30, a car alarm went off in the parking lot. It doesn't go off continuously. There's an alarm pattern that lasts about 45 seconds, then it stops. At first I wasn't sure if it was an alarm, or just an amazingly obnoxious person honking...then waiting 30 seconds...then honking in the same loud pattern. It's been going on for 20 minutes.

When I looked out the window, I saw an old man opening and closing his car and looking bewildered. And a young man reaching in and doing things in the quiet intervals. Maybe he's trying to help. They look like they're upset, but not angry. 25 minutes. I considered going downstairs to help them, but I have no idea how.

I called the police non-emergency line, in the hope that somebody else might be able to help. The guy who answered the phone said, "We don't know how to shut 'em off." He knew as well as anybody that a persistent car alarm is a false alarm, a nuisance, not a sign that somebody is stealing a car.

ETA: After a brief interval of 2 alarms going off at once, out of tune, there was quiet.

what I learned Thursday at the doctor's office

(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."

nerves

Do any of you have experience with nerve conduction studies or electromylography? I am supposed to have "NCS/EMG LUE," and I'm trying to figure out how tiring it will be and how much it's likely to hurt. Professionals have assured me that it's extremely low *risk*, but I've done any number of safe things that have been painful enough to make me nonfunctional for days afterward.

I'm going to go back to the shoulder specialist to have a steroid injection for one of the shoulder tendons. This is supposed to be painful when it's happening, and lead to weeks of pain relief afterwards. My experience of a steroid injection in my hand was spectacularly painful when it was happening, and for days and weeks afterward...but this new doctor assures me shoulders are easier.

The question of the moment has to do with scheduling. Should I do the steroid injection the same day as the nerve conduction study? They happen in the same building, which would be a lot more convenient if the building wasn't out in Wellesley. Should I try to minimize how often I schlep out there? Or try to allow some recovery time between physically challenging medical procedures?