I really am a headcase sometimes. A couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that I needed to get a cortisone shot. I expressed then that I didn’t want to. I have been avoiding having one for years and years.
Why? Because I have hang-ups about pain.
It’s not what you think
I actually have a very high tolerance for pain. Some of the highlights are: having my neck forcibly un-paralyzed in one yank when my mom decided that we could deal with paralysis on the left side, but my neck (a neutral area, neither left nor right side) was a step too far; having an electromyography on dying nerves; and squeezing three sessions for my last retinopathy surgery into one.
Those were all necessary pains. Well, maybe not the electromyography. But they all had to happen for me to move forward. My issue is with unnecessary pain. If something painful is somehow voluntary, it’s not going to happen. (That’s why I will never get a tattoo.)
When the orthopedist first said I needed a cortisone shot, my knee-jerk reaction was to say that I needed to talk to my other doctors. That was a lie. (Not very empowered, I know.) Cortisone can have an impact on blood sugar, but it is minor and temporary for the dosage I would need, which I knew from previous avoidance efforts.
The truth was that I needed to get used to the idea before I went ahead with it, and I wanted to be sure that I really did need it. It’s for trigger finger in my thumb, but I have been putting off treatment for trigger finger in my fingers (all eight of them) since diagnosis several years ago. There is some catching in the joints, but none have ever gotten stuck, and there is no pain, just varying levels of stiffness. Livable.
The trigger thumb, on the other hand, hurt with every rotational movement, from personal hygiene tasks to chopping vegetables to sleeping movements. But would it always? Without an answer to that, I couldn’t tell whether this was a necessary or unnecessary step.
So, the orthopedist sent me on my way and suggested I return in two weeks, plenty of time to check with my doctors. As it turns out, two weeks was too long. Way too long. It gave me too much time to think about things that may or may not have applied to me. I had heard nightmare stories about how painful cortisone shots are, and, as I always do, I started gathering more information (see: information gathering as a measure of control) to see if I could temper those stories or make myself feel better about it. There was nothing. Every story was the same, and I couldn’t even figure out where the injection would be, wrist with no flesh to cushion things, or base of the thumb, which at least had some padding.
For days, all the stories sat there in my head, cultivating anxiety with every minute I didn’t get it over with. I mean, I lost sleep over this. And feeling-ate. Which all made me feel pretty queasy by the time the day came. At least I had sent an email to my endocrinologist asking if she had any concerns. Two days prior, knowing it wouldn’t be enough time for her to respond, but I did it.
The appointment was early (good). I sipped water on the way over to quell the queasiness. And I folded Andrew into a ball and stuck him in my pocket. (Andrew is the rabbit from Goodnight Moon and I squeezed the hell out of him during that massive laser surgery session.) So what if I was a 45-year-old woman walking around with a stuffed rabbit sticking out of her pocket? I also disconnected from electronic entertainment and worked on relaxing in the waiting room. I was pretty sure that if I made myself sick worrying, it would be a Major Incident because of COVID. It would be hard to explain that no, I wasn’t sick.
In the end, all the worry was for very little. It turned out the orthopedist felt around for exactly where the pain is before he decided where the injection went, so that was not learnable. It also took longer than I had been given to expect. But the “pain” was a hard, extended pinch, as opposed to acute pain. There weren’t enough nerve endings in that area for it to be scary pain. Actually, the most painful part was when they were putting pressure on the injection site. I am assuming that was to prevent leakage, but it hurt, and they held it for longer than the injection took. I think. I’m kind of scared to take the bandage off.
I felt relieved and a little silly on my way out. I knew I should have done it when first suggested without waiting the two weeks. Just goes to show what happens when I let my head run away with me. I can be a real headcase sometimes.