During the same yoga class that I discovered the arthritis in my hands (see Part I – last week’s blog), I also made another discovery. And not a very pleasant one either.  No, this blog is not going to be about the yoga instructor giving me the cold shoulder because I hadn’t been there for awhile. Quite the opposite, in fact; she couldn’t have been more helpful. So what was my problem/discovery?

One of the yoga positions calls for the arms to be stretched up by the ears, then to rotate from the waist in the same position – first to one side, then to the other. Try that for a moment. Actually feels good to stretch, doesn’t it? I had always thought so too…until this class. As I stretched my left arm and shoulder up and then rotated to the left, an involuntary yelp escaped from my mouth, surprising even me. What was that pain? I asked myself. There couldn’t be something else wrong with one of my joints at the same time I had just discovered my hand arthritis, could there?

Sadly, there was. I had gotten not just a cold shoulder, but a frozen one. You’ve probably heard that term bandied around a lot. It actually means that there is limited motion and pain of the shoulder joint due to inflammation. The medical term for a frozen shoulder is “adhesive capsulitis.” This refers to the fact that inflammation has taken place in the capsule of the shoulder, leading to adhesions, or scar tissue.   

Adhesive capsulitis can occur after trauma – for instance with a partial or full tear of the rotator cuff (those tendons that connect the shoulder to the bones and allow it to move in all directions).  However, many times it occurs for no known reason. That’s right, just out of the blue.  And who does it affect most often out of the blue? Us. Women over the age of 50. There have been some studies showing that women who have thyroid disease have a greater chance of getting a frozen shoulder, but the actual reasons for its occurring spontaneously are unknown. It generally runs a course of approximately 18 months to 2 years, and then the pain usually subsides.

Back to me. The truth was that I had been having symptoms in that shoulder for the prior 6 months, including difficulty fastening my bra in the back, difficulty putting on my seatbelt, and pain when I tried to put on my coat from the back. But, these symptoms were not enough to make me take notice until that day in my yoga class. Wanting to give that shoulder every chance to regain the motion it had lost and to relieve myself of pain, I saw my orthopedic doctor, who prescribed an 8 week regimen of physical therapy to keep the shoulder moving. In addition, I had an injection of cortisone into the shoulder so that I could better do the exercises without pain.

It’s been about 18 months now since those symptoms first began, and my shoulder is better, but not completely normal. Despite the upset of discovering two age-related problems in that same yoga class, I’m actually grateful that I did. Because those particular joint problems – in my hands and in a certain aspect of my shoulder joint – didn’t show up in my day-to-day activities, I wasn’t aware of them until I stretched myself (literally!) and did movements that I didn’t usually do.  Now I know what to expect with various movements, and can even premedicate with aspirin or ibuprofen before one of my exercise classes.

So, I guess the moral to this story is that one must continually do things – mentally and physically – outside of one’s usual activities or comfort range in order to best take care of oneself. Or, a simpler message is: don’t ignore changes in your body!