I'm in pretty good condition for the condition I'm in.

One of the fun things I got to do last week was to peek inside my own shoulder, via an ultra-sound reader. What an icky place, although the doctor seemed to be able to make sense of it.

For years, going back to being a teenager before they even invented teenagers, I've had a periodic pain in my left arm. It would go away after a day or so. My theory was that I'd strained it as kid throwing a baseball or football and kept it aggravated in my teens and several decades after by shooting a basketball (I was a gunner). About three months back, the arm started hurting again and it didn't stop.

A visit to my primary care doc and a massive dose of steroids got rid of the permanent pain but i would still awaken at night in intense pain because I'd slept on it or rolled on it or just because. Thus a specialist last Tuesday and a cortisone shot, which appears to have done the trick.

My favorite moment came when the doctor said, just before the injection. "you actually have pretty good range of movement considering the mess inside your shoulder." I get that sort of thing from medical people a lot about how whatever is wrong with me or whatever I'm doing hasn't really been as bad for me as it should be or have been. Thus the header above, which I have embraced as my motto.

One interesting thing I learned when I asked the rheumatologist (for such he was) how come I had more flexibility and reach around range (in terms of scratching my back, for example) on my right side rather than my dominant left side. He said this was the rule, that the strong side is always tighter than less flexible than the other. Whether this was merely his theory or commonly agreed upon wasn't clear.