The last weekend in February 2014 was a nightmare for me. I had come back from the hospital’s emergency rooms with a diagnosis most dire. According to the radiologist, I had torn all of the ligaments in my shoulder and was scheduled for rotator cuff surgery that following Tuesday. I had been booked off from work for a week, something that would’ve been a blessing under less tense circumstances. As it was, I was devastated, not because of my shoulder, my mind had a strange way of just accepting it, but – I was almost certain that I was going to lose my job. I had been warned by the emergency room doctor that I was most probably not going to be allowed to drive for three months. Driving played an integral part of my work and my company had a habit of getting rid of people who couldn’t do what they needed to. From firing my manager for tearing all of his knee ligaments, to firing a colleague on his death bed of brain cancer, tolerance towards injuries wasn’t going to be on the table. I had had to call our HR officer to explain to her why I had to leave the office early. She had listened to me in shocked silence then tensely told me that she wasn’t going to tell my CEO until a week later because that would give me another month’s pay check at least.
I struggled to get my affairs in order that weekend, organising with people to take care of my pets, trying to figure out what I would need for at least a week in hospital (worst case scenario) and putting my contingency plans in order for when I lost my job. It was a harrowing two days, made even more so because I couldn’t sleep from the pain.
Monday dawned and I was whisked off to the orthopaedic surgeon by a friend of mine. The pain wasn’t any better, but the night before I had realised that I could move my arm again. Just a little, and it hurt like hell, but I was starting to doubt the diagnosis of the first radiologist.
I was very fortunate to end up with an orthopaedic surgeon who looked first and cut later. He was gruff, appearing almost irritated that I dare intrude on his practice… But he was thorough. He doubted the scans immediately, moving my arm, getting me to move it and finally deciding that he would rather have them taken again. I was send for the full treatment, an MRI scan, an x-ray and a sonar, all pointing to one thing.
My ligaments were intact. Damaged yes and I did have a muscle tear but it wasn’t big enough to require surgery. The main problem wasn’t my tendons or ligaments, it was my shoulder joint. I had bursitis, something I didn’t even know existed until it was pointed out to me. Essentially, in layman’s terms, its an inflammation of the soft pad on which my shoulder rotates. Anything can trigger it, though I was told that it rarely occurs in women my age. It is treated, not with surgery but with cortisone injections right in the joint. Surgery was a last option for treatment. All I needed to do was rest, see a physio, and come for injections once every few weeks until it cleared up. There was an underlying problem, with all the scans pointing to the possibility that my shoulder joints were degenerating due to a misshaped acromioclavicular joint. That would have to be corrected with surgery, but it was something I could post-pone until I’m ready for it. The first order of business was simply to get the bursitis to clear up.
It was as long a recovery as the surgery would’ve been – but it wasn’t invasive.
In fact, it was a message.
Something had to change. My body couldn’t handle the pace and stress anymore that I was under. I had to take it slow, take care of myself, be aware of my limitations.
I had to sort out my life because it wasn’t working. Some people are brought to realisations such as this by a miracle, an epiphany. I am such a stubborn person that the only way I was made to see on what a destructive path I was, was by dragging me to a halt through near crippling pain.
The bursitis took months to clear up, the pain lingered for weeks and still bother me sometimes. I had to go to physio simply to get the joint moving again. My medical aid didn’t cover half of the medication and procedures that had been done so I was at the mercy of a kind friend who did pro-bono work on me. And work? Work was unrelenting, unsympathetic. I don’t expect to be babied but in the course of those weeks in which I struggled to get permission to leave the office early to go to doctor’s appointments and physio appointments I realised that I had to leave.
It wasn’t going to be easy. For those who knew me before 2010 would remember how hard I struggled just to get this job in the first place. And, a part of me is a strong creature of habit. I wasn’t earning a bad salary, I just had to work my ass off to get it. I was conflicted, feeling as if changing my companies would be like a betrayal. There are very few things that are as stressful as a new job and with my shoulder, I didn’t know whether I would be able to cope.
But, I knew that I had to figure out a way because it also dawned on me that I wasn’t coping anyway. This injury was proof of it, even the situation under which it occurred wasn’t right. I didn’t want to find myself on dodgy roads anymore needing to change my tyre for fear of being robbed and murdered before rescue came.
And I didn’t want to work for a boss that had absolutely no humanity in him.
Alyssa's Blog 