finally visited the orthopede

I should've just talked to my boss about my shoulder problem. He knew right away that I had what Koreans call oship-gyeon, or "age-50 shoulder." More technically in English, it's called frozen shoulder, the term the orthopede gave me today when he saw I didn't know what oship-gyeon meant. According to my boss, it's a condition that arrives right around age 50, hence the name. I'm turning 53 next year, so I guess I'm right on schedule. And the long duration of the pain (the better part of a year) is also a feature of this condition, so it might be a few months more that I have to deal with it.

So yeah, I visited the orthopede this morning, got X-rayed, was told I had frozen shoulder, and did two mini-sessions of physical therapy on the spot. Physical therapy meant working on range of motion with a pulley device that had two handles: I would pull down with my left hand, and my right hand would go up. Hold for six seconds; repeat five times. Hold for ten seconds on the final pull. After that, I did the same sort of thing I'd done at the Chinese-medicine clinic: I was led to a berth with a bed, and I received a combination of TENS therapy (electric tingle through octopus-like sucker attachments) and heat lamps.

The X-ray itself, which I got before the consult and physical therapy, was utterly useless, as I knew it would be. The doc said everything looked okay, just as he did when I came in with my stress fracture. I don't know why I even bother with this orthopede, but I guess it's good that, this time, I at least got a diagnosis. So I got the diagnosis, got the therapy, and got my three days' worth of meds—pain relievers and muscle relaxants.

My boss said he got through his own oship-gyeon by using dumbbells and working on his range of motion. In reading online about frozen shoulder, I see that the condition has three stages: freezing, frozen, and thawing. The freezing stage is where you experience the most pain; in the frozen stage, there's less pain but also less range of motion, and in the thawing stage, you finally start to get better. Doctors currently have no idea why frozen shoulder occurs, but diabetes is associated with the condition, so I guess I've been a prime candidate for several years. Diabetes or not, the condition affects 3-5% of the population.

I'll be happy when the pain finally goes away; I want to concentrate on strength training next year since I won't be making my strength-training goals this year. In the meantime, I'll watch some physical-therapy vids on YouTube (the Bob and Brad channel is good), do what I can for my shoulder, and just wait out the pain.