Last wednesday (the night before Azu came) my mother partially tore a batch of muscles in her right shoulder while supporting a hefty wooden table. This caused swelling that put pressure on her brachial plexus, a bundle of nerves originating near the base of the skull and extending down both arms. As one might expect, this has put her in a constant state of pain, one that can only fully be abated by my brother's past prescription of oxycodone. She can barely move her arm, is taking 24 ibuprofen daily (under doctor's recommendation), and only gets sufficient rest while 'under the influence'.
What does all this mean? Why should you care to know about this, other than being overly sypathetic people...? Because this has of course caused great strain on the rest of our family. The coherency of my posts testify to that. o.O My elder brother, father and I have all taken on my mother's workload, whereas my sister has had her hands full with Azu. The poor girl hasn't seen my mother but once in a non-pajama-wearing, pillow-surrounded, pill-popping state. There's been a lot of despair about whether her arm will ever fully heal. We have a close friend whose muscles and nerves completely tore, and after complicated surgery and months off from work, she's still in quite a bit of pain. My mother's line of work doesn't allow for "sick-leave", so she's beginning to panic. If things don't settle down soon, though, she's going in for an MRI.
It's not like we haven't taken measures to help her. A friend of ours is a reflexologist and chiropractor, and in exchange for watching her dog while she's out of town for three weeks (not a death pug, thank god) she's already spent over 9 hours working her over. Acupuncture, massage therapy...the works. It's helped - mom can tell that much. She's regained the slightest range of motion, but the biggest change is that certain actions (like letting her arm hang straight for 5 seconds) no longer cause her excruciating pain - just some pain.
I just thought I'd give you guys a heads up. With all this going on, I apologize if my comments have slackened. Know that I'm still here, wishing you all the best, and by all means, if any of you have any insider information about correcting this problem, share it with me. At this point, my whole family would appreciate nothing more than having my mother recover.
