Doctors’ Corner: A Pain in the Shoulder

Vous devez croire! Ah, oui, vous devez absolument croire! Sabine says across the lunch table. Her rich, tenor voice is insistent. She spreads her bejeweled fingers wide. You have to believe! You. Absolutely. Have. To. Believe!

The LIFE machine will revolutionize my, well, life. Or if not my life, then at least my shoulder, which has been a living nightmare all summer.

You should try it before you leave France! she says in a sudden brainstorm.   Can I make a rendez-vous for you?

Sabine heads the agency that looks after our Bellevue when my family and I leave Antibes. We’re enjoying our traditional summer lunch, flanked by Philippe and her colleague. Gathering around a table draped in white, our foursome occupies the broad sidewalk along Boulevard Albert 1^er, Antibes’ thoroughfare to the beaches. A series of amuse bouches, dainty palette explosions offered by the chef, flood the table of this restaurant gastronomique as I study Sabine’s latest look. She has retained a florescent palette: a flowing, hot pink dress, dream-catcher earrings and a matching dream-catcher necklace that mingles with another half-dozen sugar-coated strands of the rainbow. Her eyeliner is bright turquoise. Her drink is a bubbling orange spritz.

Mine is water. Flat water. With all the shoulder dramas, I can’t bear the idea of joining in the alcohol this lunchtime.

I should’ve known my summer would be doomed. Following an ultrasound in Toronto last springtime, the hospital physicians couldn’t agree what to report. My trusted GP sent me packing with some family-sized painkillers and a scrap of wholesome advice: My shoulder shouldn’t get me down over the summer. If it did, I wasn’t drinking enough wine.

Oops. Maybe that’s where I’ve gone wrong this lunchtime.

Vous devez croire! Sabine says again, her resonant voice undulating as she moves onto a glass of rosé. I’m still nursing my flat water. Sabine paints a picture of this LIFE contraption with her words and ample hand gymnastics. They put a bandeau around your forehead, two bands around your wrists, and two more around your ankles. These bands then hook you up with wires to the LIFE computer. You stare at the machine as it reads your whole body, right through to the cells. When it discovers problems, it repairs them – and all in two hours. The machine can read right back to the third trimester of your mother’s pregnancy! Astronauts actually use it!

Okay. One member of the French Lessons community is a former astronaut. We wonder: Have you ever seen this machine up in space?

Sabine thinks this doc with the world’s best-ever crystal ball can fit me into his schedule within the next 10 days. This factoid makes me pause. Is he a real médecin? I ask. You know, with certificates and everything?

Non, he’s not registered like that, she says. He’s a different sort of doctor than Dr. L (who, Sabine knows, is our fully registered and certified family doctor here in Antibes). He does alternative medicine. You shouldn’t mention this stuff to Dr. L.

Of course not. But I did mention my shoulder to the good doctor earlier this summer when he dined one night at Bellevue.

You need to see Dr. P and Dr. P, he said over the third bottle of red. They’re the same doctors I sent you to last month for Lolo’s broken arm. (Mine, dear readers, hasn’t been the only infrastructural problem around Bellevue this summer.) Drs. P and P will inject you with ink and take a scan, he said. It’s the only way to find out what’s really wrong.

(The word inject put me off. Especially as I’d have to start all over again with any medical procedure in Toronto.)

There have been others this summer who have known the only way, too. My extremely fun and witty British osteopath here has beat me up, cracked my neck, and told me to shove a Power Plate into my armpit. These things worked for her as – guess what! – she has the exact same ailment. I must do what I can and then throw myself back into the mosh pit of life. That’s her advice. The shoulder will be an 18-month project; there’s no magic fix because it’s all due to hormones. She actually calls it “50-year-old shoulder.”

I don’t think she’s so fun anymore.

My osteo’s sidekick is French, and thus he prefers creams. After pummeling my shoulder, he recommended a gel to smooth onto my shoulder for relief. I can use it as often as I like. Alternatively I can dab on some peppermint oil at the pulse points. (To come clean, he recommended some exercises, too.)

I’ve added these exercises to those from my Toronto physiotherapist, who I saw for a few brief sessions before jetting off to France this summer. His orange elastic sports band has accompanied me here in Antibes and on our various summer travels. It even joined me on the superyacht trip where a delightful deckhand from Mauritius also had a shoulder problem.

Don’t worry at all, he said. Simply do nothing with your shoulder and let it heal. It will be as good as new in four months.

If only I, too, were in my twenties. Fortunately the emails that have piled in are from friends older than 20. They sympathise. They’ve had the same thing or know someone who has. And they all have a view.

Fragile – like a seal with a ball, a Canadian friend said. She sent me the top seven shoulder exercises from Harvard’s medical pros. A South African friend raved about some French procedure called Latarjet. A British friend found cortisone was her route – and surgery. After 16 months of pain, a New York friend finally got serious about her physio and is on the uptick. And all the while my American mother wonders, hopefully, will I come home early this summer?

Another bit of advice came from our pilates guru. After a recent session (legs and core only!), he gave me a three-minute go on his personal magnetic stimulation machine, which he keeps in the room beside his ozone machine. To be honest, I was freaked out by the notion of running magnetic currents through my cells, which is apparently what happens, so I agreed only to the easiest turn of the dial.

You have to get the 120 model of this machine, he said, as a weird plastic loop pulsed lightly on my shoulder. Then he mentioned that astronauts actually use this machine. (!)

The annual lunch with Sabine continues at its leisurely pace. Pedestrians trickle past our lunch table as the chef’s amuse bouches give way to an exquisite main course and, eventually, to dessert. Conversation moves on from the LIFE machine to equally irksome matters, such as the downward spiral of the whole of France. A camouflage-painted jeep filled with camouflage-robed militia cruises down Boulevard Albert 1^er beside our table, as if to reinforce our discussion.

When Sabine and I say goodbye for the summer, her dreamcatcher earrings dance as we exchange cheek bisous. I promise to give her LIFE machine a go if nothing else works on my wretched shoulder. Beam me up, Scotty.

In the present moment of weakness, I am considering a fortuneteller. But Philippe has landed me a consultation with his uber-sports doctor just after we land back in Toronto.   What, I wonder, will be his remedy? Pills, gels and oils? A series of exercises – or the edict to do nothing? Ink and scans? Shots or magnets or surgery?

Maybe I just forget these options. I will simply drink more wine. Doctor’s orders.