Shoulder Injuries Are No Joke

It’s been a couple years since I’ve injured myself. That seems to be my trend. Couple years ago it was my back. As you can see from previous posts I ended up having back surgery and it still hurt after that so I have a lot of physical therapy and I finally got better. This time it’s my left shoulder.

My trend seems to be that anytime I go to the gym and start feeling great about myself, and I’m getting healthy… A month later…I’m injured. The bad thing is that I can’t really tell you how I hurt myself so bad. I do know what I did to cause some of the injuries but not all of them. It all started around August 2017, we were moving from our house and I had to pack all the boxes and move things around on my own. My husband helped, but not as much. We had just started a new business so he was busy doing that. By the time moving day came my shoulder was hurting. I tried icing it. I try to rest but nothing was working. Around this time it was just a burning feeling around my shoulder. There were no sharp pains, just constant burning.

September 1st came around and we had to actually move. My husband and I decided not to get a mover and do it all ourselves. The two of us moved our house into a couple storage units because the apartment was not ready. Then a few days later we had to move again from the storage units to the apartment. By now, the burning in my shower turned into sharp pains and it felt like my arm is on fire. Trying to push past the pain I continued going to the gym. This was probably not my smartest decision.

I decided to go and see my Ortho to make sure I didn’t break anything. He did an x-ray and didn’t find any breaks. I explained where my pain was and we came to the conclusion that I separated my shoulder at my AC joint. He gave me a steroid injection into my AC joint and sent me home. He also sent me home with a script for physical therapy. Within a week, the swelling in my shoulder went down (sadly I didn’t even realize how swollen my shoulder was until I got the injection). Now I was able to see the lump on top of my shoulder. I went to physical therapy for a few weeks and it seem to be going OK. But just OK. Not better not worse, OK. A few more weeks go by with more physical therapy, but again my changes are minimal but my pain level is increasing.

Then in November I took my kids to the park. I was holding my daughters legs while she was on the monkey bars and she slipped off. It wasn’t a hard fall but her feet and weight landed in my bad arm. I caught her and it was as only for a second but it was enough to hurt. Ibuprofen and Tylenol were no longer working. The pain is causing migraines and I’m having a problem sleeping. I can’t lay on my shoulder at all and laying on my back hurts. And now…on my very painful days, I had to rely on half of a Percocet to get me through the day. I went back to my Ortho and he said that I probably need an MRI. It takes forever to get my MRI but when I finally do (January 2018)….the results were not good.

I don’t understand what I did to get a stress fracture. There was no accident, no fall, and no real reason for a break. Yes I caught my daughter but it wasn’t a heavy fall. She was only about 6 inches from my arm. But none the less….it’s fractured. My Ortho gives me another steroid shot into the bursa of my shoulder (by the rotator cuff) and prescribes more physical therapy. A month later….no relief. My ROM (range of motion) has improved on some movements and gotten worse on others. Bending my arm hurts worse at this point. I can’t hold more than 3 lbs with that arm. I am in pain daily. I am pretty good at blocking out the pain. I have a high pain tolerance and I have kids. My kids are my priority. Sadly they come before my health. So I do what I have to do to get through the day (pain or no pain).

I went back to my Ortho and explained all of this…thinking his next step would be surgery. Boy was I wrong. His suggestion was that I didn’t let my fracture heal properly and now I have to wear a sling for 2 to 4 weeks. After that if…I have surgery at all… It would only to be to remove the scar tissue in my shoulder. Nothing will be done to my rotator cuff.

So now I have a dilemma….do I get a second opinion?

My Ortho is non-surgical so I know he is doing surgery as a last resort. But after seeing my MRI and knowing how much pain I am in everyday….I have a feeling surgery is in my near future.

What should I do?

Non-Gingerbread Gingerbread Houses

There is nothing like baking to bring out the Christmas spirit. This year I decided to make homemade gingerbread houses (without the gingerbread). I got the idea from my friend BreeAnn. We are not really fans of gingerbread but we still wanted to be able to eat the house. So on Christmas Eve, we sat together as a family and made non-gingerbread houses and I felt like myself again.

Non-Gingerbread Gingerbread House Recipe

Preparation: 1 hour

2 Boxes of Honey Maid Graham Crackers

• 1 house is 6 sheets
• 4 full sheets
• 1 sheet broken in ½
• 1 sheet broken in ½ and then each ½ is cut into a triangle

Disposable Icing Decorating Bags (as many as you need)

Royal Icing (without eggs)

• 4 cups of confectioner’s sugar
• 3 tablespoons of meringue powder
• 6 tablespoons of water

Different types of small candies

• Examples: Skittles, Smarties, Gummy Bears, Mints, Sour Patch Kids, Mike & Ikes, Gobstoppers, or Jawbreakers

To begin, I got the gram crackers and prepared them. I broke them into the correct amount of pieces. The hard part is cutting the triangle pieces. You have to use a serrated knife and you slowly shave down the cracker in a straight line until they separate. Just be careful not to push too hard because you will crack it in half and you will have to start all over again. I went through quite a few crackers for this process. It takes patience.

The next part of the process is to make the Royal Icing. For this process you must bag it as soon as the icing is made. Royal icing will dry out if it’s not covered. The air dries it. So if you don’t bag it then cover the bowl it with a towel. You put the sugar in the bowl, sift the meringue powder on top of it, and then add on the water. Blend it together until it’s a solid form. This should take about 5 minutes. Place the icing into the disposable bags. Make sure to have enough bags that everyone can have their own.

Take one of those bags of icing and use it to glue each house together. Make the bottoms of the houses first. Let the icing dry and harden. Then start the tops of the houses. By the time you finish the 3^rd or 4^th house …the 1^st one should be ready. Once all of the houses are built then you let them stand for at least 30 minutes. This will give the houses time to harden so when the kids decorate, the houses do not fall apart.

Put all the candy onto a dish and take it all to the table to decorate.

Man!! I love baking! Even though I didn’t really “bake”…..it felt like baking. Today was a good day!