got a third cortisone shot in left delt about a month before leaving for Cancun and felt pretty decent. my surgeon said he was comfortable going every six months if it brought relief for at least that long. the previous one was good for two years but this time it's starting to hurt again already. ironically i haven't even hit the gym hard since Cancun return. it's mostly sleeping. i sleep on my left side with arm extended under pillow and wake up in serious pain and mobility issue in shoulder. he had said at last inject if it didn't last six months he wanted to do an mri and see what was in there. based on the xray he did before injection there is a bit of arthritis and possible a couple of spurs but he wants to rule out any tendon tears and if no tears do a scope and clean up any burrs or spurs. very tentative to do so based on how unimpressed i was condition wise this summer, motivation was lacking and head not in a great place. the down time along with the way the city i work for interprets their implementation of the FMLA guidelines is sketchy. Most places allow you to use up all your sick and personal time while out on medical leave before putting you on FMLA which allows for 12 weeks of unpaid leave where your job is protected and after those 12 weeks you can be terminated. My city runs it concurrently with whatever time you have to use and after twelve weeks you can be terminated even if you still have sick and/or vacation or personal time still on the books using the twelve weeks in the FMLA language to thereby terminate you, unfortunately the federal law allows them to use it either way, as a way to protect the employee's job or as a way to discharge them so if my surgeon can't send me back to work with a note saying no restrictions before 12 twelve weeks i'm looking at job loss. at 50 i can't risk that although he says for scope it would be 6-8 weeks with 8 being max. one step at a time i guess, see what the mri says first and go from there.
