My shoulder hurts. It’s been hurting for a long while, but lately seems worse.
Flashback: 2022 — a PET scan shows cancer in my shoulder, among other places. The cancer is advanced enough that I will never be rid of it.
Now: I mention my shoulder pain to my cancer team and they set up an MRI to see if the cancer was waking up. There is a central pillar to my day-to-day life: as long as PSA in my body is undetectable, my cancer is dormant. “Well, most of the time,” my doctor said. I have to tell you, friends, that most and all are not the same.
Flashback: 2020 — I spill off my bike at high (for me) speed, and my shoulder takes the worst of it. X-rays ensue, damage is noted.
Most of the time. I had really invested in that number. I am still invested in that number. But confidence in my ability to be alive a couple of years from now is undermined. Which, in retrospect, is obvious. There is no single number that holds all the magic.
Now: I lie in the magic magnetic tube, advised not to take deep breaths, the thought of which makes want to fill my lungs. I have ear protection; it is loud in there. BRRR BUZZZ GRRR. The progression and interposition of the pitches of the loud buzzing noises are governed by mathematics, which makes them seem almost musical. The Laurie Anderson/Brian Eno tube of experience, featuring Philip Glass. It helps me keep still, listening to the sounds as music, mesmerizing, and I began to understand the patterns of the sounds as the scans progressed. Philip Glass.
Flashback: 202? — I’m on the elliptical and when I’m pulling with my right arm I hear a pop and my shoulder hurts like hell. I’ve had the bicycle crash, but I don’t connect it with this pain. The activity was so normal, so innocuous, that I discount the idea that I might just have done serious damage. I’ll be walking like a t-rex for a bit but things will get better. Eventually. But they never did. In the meantime I have learned to use my left arm to support my right when lifting is required. You wouldn’t even notice me doing it.
Now: My cancer team is all over the MRI results. The good news: no evidence the cancer is causing trouble. In the opinion of the radiologist, my pain is not because of cancer but because my shoulder is (I’m paraphrasing) seriously fucked up.
Full tear of the ligament used to raise my arm. Just not connected anymore. Partial tears all around it. One of the biceps ligaments undetectable, detached and presumed atrophied. Scar tissue becoming a problem, arthritis setting in.
NOT cancer. Not cancer. This new uncertainty injected into my life has not manifested. My shoulder’s fucked up is all. It’s a structural issue, and nothing more.
