Jo's op

From http://ianrstewart.blogspot.com/

Yesterday (Monday), I took the day off to take Jo to Albyn for her appointment with Dr. Kumar, who seemed to quickly recognise and diagnose the problem with her shoulder. Apparently it's frozen shoulder (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frozen_shoulder) or, more properly, adhesive capsulitis.

Apparently the shoulder joint sits in a bag and this bag has now shrunk, causing lack of movement in her shoulder. Jo first experienced symptoms and pain in the middle of last year. According to Dr. Kumar, it goes through stages and, if had been caught in the first few weeks, or even months, then a simple cortisone injection should have resolved the matter and stopped it developing further, but there's now scar tissue there which is adding to the restriction and the pain. Now that we're 7 or 8 months on, Jo had 2 choices - either wait for it to heal itself - which could take another year or more, or have an operation. Jo chose the latter.

She had an X-ray just to confirm that there's nothing else going on - and there's not - so we're now just waiting for a space in Dr. Kumar's busy diary. Mid-March is most likely. It's keyhole surgery, but although it's just daycare, there's a general anaesthetic, followed by some fairly lengthy physiotherapy apparently.

What causes it? Apparently nobody knows.