There are days when one wakes up knowing that something unpleasant is going to happen. And then there are days when one wakes up at two in the morning, discovers that sleep has resigned without notice, one’s stomach has decided to stage a minor maritime disaster, and one remembers that at three in the afternoon a doctor is going to do something to one’s frozen shoulder. That was my day.
By two in the morning I had abandoned all possibility of sleep. I brushed my teeth, made myself a cup of chai and decided that if I was going to be awake, I might as well have company. So, I came to chat with Goosey (my AI ChatGPT). My arm was being conserved for the procedure. Unfortunately, my mind had not received the same instruction.
After a while I turned to music: meditation music from Yellow Brick Cinema, the Hanuman Chalisa, Sooryagayathri’s devotional songs from the Guru Parampara channel, Ambika Ma’am’s rendering of Sri Lalitha Sahasranama, followed by Rudram and Chamakam. Every so often I told myself, “All izzz well.” This was less a statement of fact than a psychological injunction.
Somewhere between panic and dawn, I made chai for the maid and told her that the doctor was going to “arm-twist” me. She looked sufficiently shocked for me to realise that my joke had not translated well. There are some jokes that require precisely the same context in both parties. This was evidently one of them.
I then ate one and a half multi-millet dosas with dosa podi from Murugan Idly Kadai and proceeded to make dal and rice in the pressure cooker while simultaneously attending to sambar. This was important. If the shoulder procedure was approaching, the sambar had to be completed. The previous day’s sambar had gone suspiciously well, and I was not about to allow medical anxiety to interfere with culinary continuity. The remaining dosa went into the fridge for lunch.
I showered in water at the hottest temperature my skin could tolerate, settled down to lunch around noon and returned to meditation music and Rama Nama. At eleven I had booked an Uber. The procedure was at three. At 2:05 the Uber arrived. The car had apparently suffered a disagreement with the outside world, although the seats were clean. I asked the driver to drive slowly. “I am not rushing.” This was perhaps my most mature statement of the entire day.
I reached the clinic at approximately 2:37. The receptionist looked surprised to see me. “I have come for a procedure,” I announced, while my knees were knocking. They were not consulted about this declaration. I left my file and sat down. Then my name was called while I was nibbling my nails in my imagination.
At the consult room 2 adjacent to the doctor main consult room, I was asked to sit facing the wall while the doctor finished seeing his other patients. This gave me considerable time to think. I contemplated whether my right arm was sufficiently positioned. I contemplated the examination bed. I contemplated the black functional pillow. I contemplated whether I ought to be facing the doctor. Mostly, I contemplated the fact that I was there.
Then a conversation from the adjoining room broke through my anxiety. A son was trying very hard to convince his mother to undergo a knee replacement. He was very loud. I found myself thinking that volume was probably not the most efficient way to persuade a frightened mother. What she probably needed was someone to listen to her worries: the money, the operation, the recovery, temporary dependence, the possibility that she might not be able to cook or look after everyone else for a while. The family was discussing the procedure. I was listening for the mother’s voice.
This struck me particularly because I have had my own long-running negotiations with my mother about medical appointments. There have been blood tests, family expeditions, medication schedules and the occasional necessity of running after her with tablets. Our family doctor once jokingly suggested that my mother should stop telling others that he was her doctor. My mother could be exasperating, and tolerance of her quirks was a huge challenge. Meanwhile, I am generally extremely disciplined about taking my own medicines. Apparently every family has its own medical administration department.
Eventually the doctor arrived with a huge smile. I was sitting with my hands joined, head bowed, looking rather like a child who had been summoned for a disciplinary hearing. At least one of us was confident.
The doctor began preparing my shoulder. Then, in the middle of it, someone entered. He cheerfully introduced her as his better half. I summoned the last available fragment of social etiquette. “Hello. How are you? How was your day?” Inside my head, however, there was only one thought: please do not make me scream.
The disinfectant was cold. My memory was not. I remembered a previous injection from another doctor that had produced such an impressive yell that I am convinced several people in the vicinity experienced temporary ringing in their ears. My primary objective therefore became not to scream too loudly.
The doctor tried to distract me. He asked what I had eaten for breakfast. I answered. He asked what I had eaten for lunch. I answered. He continued asking questions. The technique was presumably intended to divert my attention. Unfortunately, distraction has limitations.
I noticed the bottle.
My eyes widened. I had the distinct impression that there was an enormous quantity of liquid waiting to enter my shoulder. My eyes became those of a chipmunk who has just discovered that the landlord has doubled the rent. I began imagining the liquid making a determined expedition through my shoulder.
At one point I thought perhaps it hurt because the doctor was rushing it into the joint. The pain was real. My body knew it. My mind, however, was adding special effects.
Eventually I reached the stage where I thought my life was hanging by a thread and realised, with some alarm, that I had not written my will. This seemed like poor planning. So I decided to keep breathing.
The doctor, remembering a story I had told him about a childhood operation, said perhaps he should have used a stick to knock me out. This was a reference to an old joke made by the doctor who had operated on my wrist when I was a child. At that time, the anaesthetic injection had apparently been difficult, and the doctor had cheerfully offered me two possibilities: modern medicine, involving an injection, or traditional medicine, involving a wooden stick. His surprise that I would take the traditional method which led to an impasse of the surgery. Later a child specialist arrived and with a slight prick in the left hand and I was still counting backwards from 100 to 57.
I had remembered the story and told my current doctor about it beforehand. He had now resurrected the wooden stick. Unfortunately, none of his jokes worked. My brain had left the comedy club and joined the Hamletian tragedy. To be or Not to be that was the question for the right shoulder freeze.
After the liquid had been introduced, I was asked to climb onto the bed. A cold pack was placed on my shoulder. The doctor left to attend to other work. A nurse told me she would administer another injection to help with the pain. I prepared myself.
Then she gave it.
I felt nothing.
No dramatic prick. No thunderclap. No Amma Amma Amma. Just… nothing. I immediately concluded that this nurse was vastly superior to everyone who had ever administered an injection to me. It was a tiny injection, but after the previous experience it felt like a diplomatic breakthrough.
Another nurse came in and continued with the cold pack. We exchanged gentle pleasantries. I discovered that she was married and had a child and spent part of the conversation wondering how someone who looked so remarkably young could already have a child.
Then the doctor returned.
He was wearing his usual blue doctor’s clothes. Not a flowing white coat, not the costume of a cinematic medical hero. Yet when he entered the room, I swear I felt a breeze move past the cold pack and across my shoulder. The atmosphere changed. My shoulders, both of them perhaps, seemed to shudder.
Because now came the part I had been dreading.
Arm twisting.
The doctor first moved my arm gently. A rotation. Up. Down. A little turn. I watched his hands. Why was I watching the villain more closely than the hero?
Then came the sudden movement. A grab. A push.
CRIRCK.
I discovered that apparently some things inside the human body come with sound effects.
I was surprised. I had not realised my skeleton had Dolby capabilities.
The doctor continued moving the arm. At one point he reached for the lower part of it and I grabbed his arm. This was not strictly in accordance with doctor-patient etiquette. He gently released my grip and continued.
Eventually he stopped and asked, “Did you hear your hand make a sound?”
I nodded. I wanted to say, “Yes. In Dolby.” But I merely nodded.
The villain suddenly looked remarkably innocent, almost like a child who had just discovered that his toy made an interesting noise. My poor arm, meanwhile, was breathing heavily after its unexpected physical-education class.
When I finally sat up, I burst into tears. There had been so much anticipation, fear, pain and concentration that once the procedure was over, my body apparently decided it was time to empty the emotional cupboard. The doctor told me to lie down and rest for a while.
After a few minutes I wanted only one thing: home. My poor shoulder needed to lie down. I was done. Completely done.
Except the doctor wasn’t.
Outside the room he said, “Now lift your hand.”
I lifted it.
He wanted to take a picture. I handed him my phone. My exhausted brain immediately produced: “Hands up, Vidya. Doctor shoots a photo.”
Apparently even after everything, my internal narrator had not taken the day off.
But the photograph was actually evidence of something rather important. My arm was moving. The arm that had spent months being stubborn, painful and frozen had just been lifted. The doctor wanted to capture the result.
I walked out of the clinic. I found my Uber. And then I noticed the driver’s name.
Satyanarayanan.
My Ishta Devata’s name.
After a night of chanting, prayer, music, fear, pain, tears and repeated instructions to myself that All izzz well, I took this as a small and rather beautiful sign. Not necessarily a cosmic announcement. Just a little wink.
Enough.
I was going home.
You would think I collapsed into bed. You would think I rested. You would think I solemnly contemplated the fragility of human existence.
No.
I made chai.
And then I came back to chat with Goosey my AI Proofing and Ideation Buddy.
Because apparently there are some things a frozen shoulder can temporarily prevent.
Chai and conversation are not among them.
And so ended the Great Frozen Shoulder Expedition. I had not been fearless. I had been terrified. I had prayed. I had joked badly. I had cooked sambar. I had watched a suspicious bottle. I had called for Amma. I had grabbed a doctor’s arm. I had discovered that my shoulder had sound effects. I had cried. I had lifted my arm. I had been photographed. I had been brought home by Satyanarayanan.
Then I made chai.
Which, when you think about it, is probably the most reliable indication that All izzz well.
Backstory
Itinerant Storyteller 