If I've been giving you the cold shoulder...

Hello there, old friend. I never tire of this view. Simple. Beautiful. Home. 

Let's not discuss whether or not this picture was snapped from a moving vehicle while crossing the Poplar Street Bridge. We all know that construction plus rush hour means nobody was really moving anywhere very quickly anyway. 

And it's not like my T-Rex arm was doing me much good on the steering wheel. It might as well be put to good use elsewhere, right?

I thought so.

There's another view that is becoming all too familiar to me. This one, however, does grow old.

Hello there, neurologists of Wash U. Nice to see you again. Please, feel free to poke me with needles, prod my arm and shoulder, manipulate my body to move in ways that it doesn't want to, and zap me with electricity. It's always a pleasure to spend an entire day with you.

If you missed the original post and want to read how this dino-riffic journey began with a nerve sheath tumor you can do so here. For those who already know or just want to get on with it, here we go. 

After a full day with the super special specialist neurosurgeon and her team, shuffling between offices and doctors and therapists and technicians, it was decided that things with my nerves were looking good. Both the supra scapular and axillary nerves (the two we were concerned about) appear to be connected and slowly re-enervating. If I were having this problem 5 years ago, I am told, they would have said "Hooray! Congratulations! No nerve surgery needed!" However, it being 2017, there is one surgery that might "open up space" in my deltoid for faster healing.

This visit uncovered another problem, though, that will have to be dealt with before we can make any decisions on this new surgery.

Apparently I am now suffering from adhesive capsulitis of the shoulder.

Big words, I learned, for "frozen shoulder."

So off to another specialist it was. And I couldn't just see any specialist. It needed to be an orthopedic specialist who does shoulders and only shoulders. I get to do that in my beloved Lou, too, since the current city doesn't have the right kind of special specialists. 

I was re-diagnosed with a frozen shoulder and told that I am going to get two steroid injections followed by 6 weeks of intense physical therapy and stretching, stretching, stretching.

Of course, these special people are hard to get appointments with, so I can't get the injections for another 2 weeks. Instead of dinner and roses for Valentine's Day, I get to have a needle stuck deep into my shoulder socket. Twice.💝 Then back to the Sunflower State for therapy and back to the Lou again to see if I can move enough to talk about whether the surgery is needed or not. 

Back and Forth. Back and Forth. Why has no one invented a teleporter yet?

Recovery can take anywhere from months to years.

In the meantime I'll just keep rocking my side pony...

...and reading my Walt Whitman.