Escaping Surgery…for now !

Dudes !!! I finally caught a break !!

After reporting to the Kloof Hospital in Pretoria, I made my way to the consulting rooms of Dr. J.F van Staden, a prominent Orthopaedic Surgeon who was to make the decision of whether my trip would be put on hold for a few months or not !! I am pretty sure that he had no idea how nervous I was, nor was he aware of the wave of apprehension which carried me from his waiting room and into his office….

Earlier, his secretary, calling me loudly from amongst the other L.S.D.’s (Lame, Sick and Dead) who sat in various forms of distress in the comfortable chairs provided for patients, had addressed me as “Mr. Gypsy-Biker”… This I assumed was far easier than trying to pronounce my full name !

Dr. van Staden rifled through the sonograms of my shoulders, and took the four x-rays from my trembling hands and clipped them on the back lit board for his closer inspection…

“Mmmm… Nothing seems to be torn…” he said almost to himself… Relief began flooding through me, but was tempered by his next statement.

“I am concerned about this area here!” he said, jabbing a finger into an area betwen my collarbone and the top of my humerus… “You have a reasonable amount of inflammation in the joint of your left shoulder… It is known as Rotator Cuff Impingement Syndrome… ”

He then went on to sketch exactly what the problem was, drawing an accurate picture of the various bones and muscles in my shoulder, and explaining how they all worked…. Those that know me, will tell you that I am not at all comfortable with being anywhere near a hospital, let alone watching my damaged shoulder being sketched by somebody who clearly had plans to repair the darn thing with instruments designed to put the fear of the Underworld into me….!!

He spent the next few minutes testing the limits to which I could extend my arms in a variety of directions, before the look of pain on my face told him what he needed to know…

“I am going to inject Celestone Soluspan and Macaine into your left shoulder,” he nonchalantly informed me… “Commonly known as Cortisone…”

“That would no doubt involve a needle,” I mumbled to myself…

My stomach did a flic-flac, followed by a triple somersault, and landed neatly in my left boot….

Needles and I have never been the best of friends, and many is the time I have woken up on a cold floor with a nurse or doctor laughing hysterically at the speed with which I had descended to the floor, at the first sight of the needle… A blood donor, I can never be…

“This is 2010” I said as sternly as I could, “Surely there are tablets for this sort of thing?”

“When did you say you wanted to leave on this trip of yours?” he enquired, turning his back on me and ripping open the little carton which contained the hypodermic and a phial of clear liquid.

I sat on the end of the gurney, resigned to my fate. I stared out between the louvers covering the window on my right, towards the bustling highway, and wished myself into the middle of the mayhem of rush-hour traffic…anywhere but in the vicinity of the needle he now was pointing skyward to get rid of any air trapped in the barrel… He prodded and poked around the muscles of my left shoulder, until he got the desired result from me… “Ouch!!!”

“Ah, this is the spot then…” he said and prepared the site with a dab of alcohol-doused cotton wool. I felt the needle slip in and for a while it seemed that the damn thing was on it’s way down into my armpit. Then I felt the contents of the needle slowly entering the joint… My eyes must have glazed over, as the view out of the window had become rather blurred… My right hand gripped the gurney under me as tightly as I could to prevent myself from pitching head first onto the floor… Just as I considered giving up the battle to stay upright, the needle was removed from my shoulder, and I received a light slap on the back to indicate it was all over… I am not sure if he had seen my distress at the sight of the needle, but if he did, he chose not to comment, which at least left me with a little of my tattered dignity….!!!

“Take it easy for a few days, and if you are still feeling any pain after a few weeks, come around again just before you go, and we’ll give it another shot…”

“What about my elbows joints?” I asked, “they have been troubling me too…”

“We can do them all at the same time!” he replied.

Yeah, right, and in order to do that, he had better have me lying down !!

I left Dr. van Staden’s surgery with a tingling in my shoulder, and a tiny plaster marking the spot where the needle had entered. I walked across the parking lot toward my bike with a spring in my step. No surgery for me !!! No sirree !!!

I hardly noticed the traffic on the way back home, and after parking the bike, bounded up the stairs to the apartment I shared, made myself a cup of coffee, and settled down to watch a DVD of a bunch of guys who rode the Pan American Highway, from Alaska to Patagonia, Argentina…..

I’m gonna be doing just that !! Sore shoulders, creaking joints, and all !! If Cortisone is the magic potion with which I have to make this all possible, then so be it !!!

This tiny plaster was all I had to show for another nerve wracking visit to the Orthopaedic Surgeon... Quite disappointing, really....!!!