All clear

My yearly exam, which had been canceled twice, came just after my trip to Indiana where I returned with some type of shoulder/arm issue and a racing heart with fluttering. The arm started to hurt after a Sunday of watching Steelers football via my computer while playing cards all day. I thought it was from having my arm bent since I hold my cards with my left hand. I didn't think much of it, despite it being quite painful, until it didn't go away. The pain that is. I made a few comments about my arm hurting, kept stretching it out instead of keeping it bent, and after a couple of days of that I realized that my shoulder was also bothering me.

I thought back to what I had done previously to this time, and the only thing I could come up with was a day at the gym when I decided to use the rowing machine and to lift free weights directly after rowing, using two pounds more than normal. I figured I must have strained it at that time and then aggravated it sometime later. The pain was never consistent. Sometimes it was just the shoulder. Sometimes it was my elbow. Sometimes it was my forearm. Sometimes it was all three.

I turned to the Internet medical world, and after researching my symptoms I decided I had golfer's elbow, computer elbow and radial tunnel syndrome.

My heart began its premature ventricular and atrial contractions at the end of my trip to a point where I felt my heart was racing at a rapid speed for a person on beta blockers. I had been diagnosed with the PVC and PAC's several years ago, wore a holter monitor, had an ultrasound of my heart, and was sent away with it all within "normal" range. Periodically, it acts up to a point where I feel it, and I usually find that my blood pressure is out of whack as well and proceed with that, but this time the BP was great. Because I have the Apple watch, I am able to check my heart rate, and finding it above normal at various times I added it to the list of things I would need to discuss with my physician.

My doctor did an EKG in the office which took longer to hook me up then it did to run the test. It all came back normal, but of course, my heart was behaving by then despite racing earlier in the morning. She told me to keep an eye on it and maybe keep track of what triggered it. She examined my arm and my shoulder, ran me through a few tests, ordered an x-ray, and gave me exercises for bursitis and tennis elbow. The x-ray came back clear with nothing between the joints and blah, blah, blah, clear. She offered to send me to physical therapy, but by then the exercises she had given me, along with icing both the arm and the shoulder, seemed to be working so I told her I would keep on trucking.

Meanwhile, in Indiana my SIL was having back issues and a few other aches and pains that started while I was there. She happened to be coming up on her six month appointment with her oncologist so she did the same and laid it out for the doctor. He was sure it didn't have anything to do with cancer, BUT he sent her for CT scans and an MRI and we had some tense weeks waiting for the results which came back clear. Blah, blah, blah, clear. No cancer. No signs of any back issues. He recommended exercises, although he didn't specify which back exercises she should do for what he called "muscle strain".

Then this week my youngest called me from college to tell me she had had a headache for five days and had made an appointment to see the doctor at the student health center. I interrogated her and discovered the headache was worse at night and upon first awakening. A 10 our of 10 on the pain scale, but she was "dealing".

By the time she called me to tell me what the health center doctor said, I'd run through all sorts of scenarios in my head. For some odd reason, brain aneurysms never popped as a possibility in my brain despite the fact that my husband's sister had several more than ten years ago, but this doctor mentioned it as a possibility to my kid who, like her mother, forgot the family history. As soon as my daughter told me that, I did what I usually do when health issues hit my children...I freaked out.

In the end, after various phone calls to the professionals I keep on my phone list, my daughter and I met in the ER of the closest children's hospital. Because of the pain scale, the awakening with headaches, and the family history, a CT scan was ordered. They started her on an IV cocktail to deal with the headache and after the results came back blah, blah, blah, clear they shot in another IV medication and the headache was knocked out. She was sent home with instructions to rest and to keep taking ibuprofen for any headaches.

Three out of three on the clear scale. Three of us keeping on, grateful, although the issues are still present. I'm thinking stress might be the trigger for all three and so we are holding on for another month when children will be home, semesters will be over, and family will surround us. Here is to a stress free holidays for all.