Off the Cuff: Such a pain in the shoulder

I ignored a dull ache in my right shoulder for quite some time till my friend informed me that she had something called a ‘frozen shoulder'.

Someone suggested that I rub a gel that helps relieve pain in the affected area. The strange-smelling gel reminded me of a great holiday I had enjoyed in a hill resort in the south of India.

To get to the hill station, we had to take a train to Madras (now Chennai), and from there get on to a ‘toy train' which wound through the scenic forest and over deep, vertigo-causing gorges and finally to Ooty or Ootacamund, which was once the summer residence of the Madras Presidency.

To cut the story short, the gel reminded me of that holiday because of the giant eucalyptus trees I saw whenever I went for a walk in the hills. The leaves from those trees crunching under my feet smelled exactly like the gel, which obviously was made using eucalyptus oil.

In any case, apart from taking me down memory lane, the gel did nothing to ease my misery. My ‘frozen shoulder' friend helpfully told me that things could get so bad that I would barely be able to lift my arm. Someone suggested that I try yoga. I read about yoga on the internet and one website said that the shoulder pain could be a result of stress, and the tension could be radiating down to the shoulder.

But yoga requires one to sit cross-legged on the floor. I can't do that.

For some reason, whenever I try to sit cross-legged, my knees stick way up to my chin. It used to get embarrassing whenever we were invited to a sit-down dinner in Saudi Arabia. To get to the food in front of me on the floor, I had to reach out between my knees sticking up in the air. Then my toes would start to feel numb as I was somehow cutting off all blood flow to the feet by sitting in such a ridiculous position.

The dinners would usually last for hours and slowly my face and feet would turn blue. When I finally got up, I looked like a toddler trying to find his feet or an inebriated person reaching out for help.

So I decided yoga wasn't for me because I didn't wish to transfer the shoulder ache to my feet.

Fear factor

Someone suggested that I might have calcium build-up in my shoulder joint and may have to undergo surgery to get rid of it. For someone who gets freaked out just looking at a hypodermic needle, the talk about an operation sent me scurrying to the internet to check it out.

"Calcium deposits usually occur in women between the ages 35 to 60," said a medical website. That's not very helpful, I thought to myself. It went on to say that the operation is painless and the hole made in the shoulder … and I couldn't read on.

Later on, a specialist told me that the internet is not a great place to find medical information. He said that some of the gastro-intestinal problems experienced by many people in the UAE today were caused by stress. Sometimes there is a trace of blood, so they look it up on the internet, check the symptoms … and they think they have cancer, which adds to the stress, he said.

He then thought deeply and said: "Most of my patients come to me after getting ‘treated' by their friends or relatives. The friends say, ‘I had exactly the same thing' and they share the medicine."

There's only one more person I need to check with about my shoulder ache; my mother-in-law. She has some great home remedies written down in a book filled with yellowing, faded pages.