Dan, I could have just about written your whole post for you!

Three years ago my right shoulder started hurting. Just a little bit, and only when I back-paddled my kayak. I could live with it. But it ever-so-gradually began getting worse and worse, until in December I found that if I were lying on my back I couldn't raise that arm unless I picked it up with my left hand and lifted it past the pain point.

I went first to the chiropractor who was sure it was muscle-related (what else would a chiropractor think?), and he did deep massage. After half a dozen sessions with zero improvement, he decided it was beyond his pay grade and he sent me to the orthopedist. The orthopedist pushed and pulled and scheduled me for X-rays and an MRI. Those tests clearly showed a bone spur and a calcified tendon. (Sound familiar?)

The orthopedist scheduled me for surgery to de-calcify the tendon and remove the bone spur, and in the third week of January the work was done. I awoke in the recovery room and for the first time in years, without benefit of anaesthetic or pain medication, I was pain-free. I never needed nor took so much as an aspirin following the surgery.

Because the surgery was minor, and didn't involve reattaching tendons or repairs to the rotator cuff, the orthopedist (who was also the surgeon) relaxed his pre-surgery requirement of staying in a sling for weeks and possibly months, instead saying use the sling when doing exercise such as hiking in the mountains, and stay out of the kayak and off the bicycle for a month or so. Use a chair with an armrest when typing on the computer. A piece of cake!

Until... three months after the surgery, the pain began coming back, and over a period of a few weeks reached the pre-surgery level. An X-ray shows that the calcification is returning. Oddly enough, the pain only arises following a period of inactivity. I can hike (with poles), or kayak, or bike, or paint the ceiling -- you name it -- with little to no discomfort. But if I sit or lie down for an hour, then moving the arm is quite painful, say 7 on a scale of 10. It makes getting a good night's sleep difficult, as I have to get out of bed and swing the arm around until it stops hurting.

I went through the two cortisone injections, but as in your case the relief was only temporary. The orthopedist/surgeon says give it another month, and then we can talk about more surgery, in which he proposes to actually cut out the portion of the tendon with the recurring calcification and sew it back together. Sounds a bit scary to me.

I didn't fully understand the nature of the anaesthetic they gave me for the surgery, and had a bit of a fright. I was lying there on the operating table, fully conscious, awake, and aware, listening to the surgeon and the assistants discussing (en español, of course) what they were going to do, and having the horrible thought that they were going to start cutting me open while I was still awake. The anaesthetic had caused complete paralysis. I couldn't even flutter an eyelid or move a finger, no matter how hard I tried. How could I tell them, "Hey, guys, wait a minute! I'm still awake! Is this gonna hurt?" Then, before I could panic completely, the anaesthesiologist upped the dosage a tiny bit and I was out like a light until the recovery room. Whew!

Of course, the surgery left a huge, hideous scar on my arm. I don't dare go to the beach any more for fear of starting a panic as people see this horrible disfigurement and run away in abject fear. I've attached a photo to this post, but you probably don't want to look at it unless you are unusually horror-resistant.

OK, so I exaggerated a little bit. But that three-inch scar DID require four stitches! Hey, I was lucky to get out of there alive!

So that's my story, incomplete as of this writing. But I am confident things will get better.

FWIW, Mexico has (IMHO) really good medical care, at reasonable cost. The total cost of my surgery, including surgeon, anaesthesiologist, assistant, nurse, and who knows what others, plus a full one-day stay in the hospital, came to about $3,700 USD. The anaesthesiologist's bill was only $500 USD, it would have likely been ten times that amount in the U.S. My health insurance (through my retirement) covered 100% of the total cost.

tanstaafl.