I've had a pain in my arm for a week and a half. Things that ail me usually go away by themselves, but this seemed to be persisting. The interesting thing was that every time I thought about calling Kaiser to make a doctor's appointment, the pain magically went away. I'm so mental! (oops, ixnay on the entalmay).

I hesitate to call Kaiser because of my last experience with them. Thrice I made psychiatric appointments with them, twice the doctor didn't show up. The one time she did show up, after 45 minutes she concluded that my problem wasn't bad enough for me to see her regularly through my company's insurance plan, but it was so bad that I probably needed to go into more intense therapy.

I sent a letter of complaint to Kaiser regarding the two times she didn't show up. They contacted me back and told me they were taking the matter very seriously, and I also had the option of using the complaints procedure reporting this to the State Health Department or something.

They also mentioned that "Dr. Jeong was also having problems at the time". Greeeaaatt. Kaiser Hospitals experience. For those who don't know about Kaiser Hospitals, they have a shitty, shitty reputation

I felt my letter was enough and let the matter drop. In their follow-up, they asked me if I would like to make an appointment with another doctor. I declined. The experience made me feel a whole lot better. I have issues, but I'm really not the one who's screwed up!

Anyway, I finally did go to the doctor for this arm pain. I described my symptoms to the doctor very specifically, and he immediately got a sense of what it was and asked a bunch of leading questions that I affirmed. Everything I said reinforced his theory of what it was.

Turns out he knew because he had it before. He mused, "You don't seem too concerned about this and you're probably just curious about what the hell is going on", because that was his reaction, and he was right. It was a pain, but it was just a pain. It didn't feel like something was seriously damaged.

He called it Cervical Radiculopathy (props to Kateri for the best response: "You don't have a cervix"), a nerve impingement, in my case most likely in my neck, affecting the nerves running down my right arm.

As a nerve problem, it doesn't affect my muscles, explaining my ability to work, and ride, and audition, and perform anything physical that I want to despite the pain. It also explains the ineffectiveness of Advil to stop the pain.

When he experienced it, he said it went away after five months. I, too, expect this to go away in considerably less time.

Physical ailments are not my challenge in this lifetime. This arm pain was something new and I was just curious. If I didn't have insurance that was about to run out, I wouldn't have bothered at all. But as long as I have insurance, I decided to use it.

Bottom line is that physical ailment, I don't care. If you care about physical ailments, you care about living as long as possible; not my concern. Give me an existential problem and I'll get stuck on it, like if nothing's pulling me away, why don't I just stay, but a pain, even a debilitating pain, in my arm is nothing. Although it does bother me a little why it's happening at all. Of course, I have my answer to that. Whoops, ixnay on the entalmay.

And now:
The plan is to call in sick tomorrow and head up to Tahoe to meet up with my bro again. If I go, I'll be back Saturday night-ish.