Lets start by introducing myself. My name is Martin and I am from Norway's most rainy city.
I have a boyfriend and work as a receptionist. I have had many challenges in my life. Things that have not gone quite as I wanted.
When I was born, I got an injury in my left shoulder. It´s called a Plexus injury. This happened after I was born with a weight of 6030 grams and they had to pull me out by the arm to get me loose. Very complicated birth. This meant that I was paralyzed in my left arm when I was born. The doctors told my parents that I probably was going to be paralyzed for the rest of my life. My parents didn't want to give up on this though and slowly started training it with small workout movements.
As a result, I slowly began to function in my arm again.
After many years of physical therapy and various surgeries, things got better in the shoulder. I managed to function normally and find different solutions to work like everyone else. This, of course, came with limitations.
I was lucky and got to be a patient at the Plexus Injury Clinic at Haukeland University Hospital. There they had a team of physiotherapists, plastic surgeons, occupational therapists and 2 specialist doctors from Sweden.
The joy was to be short-lived when I started having problems in 2016. To go from having a fairly painless and normal day to being in the hospital the next day was pretty tough.
This was not be the first time I was admitted either. I joke with my friends that I have a punch card at Haukeland. That is kinda funny, but unfortunately it was part of my everyday life.
Many of hospital visits was based on the diagnosis "Pain in extremity". This was the headline when I was admitted to hospital. CT, MRI and X-ray. Ambulances, A&E and ER.
I had a lot of frustration based on different things. Couldn´t they do anything to help? The bureaucracy was at it´s worst and the centralization of things did not help me. It affected me in a very bad way.
The plexus injury clinic I was affiliated with at Haukeland was closed down and was transferred to Rikshospitalet in Oslo. Urgent things would therefore have to be resolved by the local hospital, Haukeland without the specialists from the Plexus Injury Clinic. The rest was to be resolved by the hospital in Oslo.
When there was an opportunity to solve things, it was done as a semi-desperate solution from Haukeland. So that they could patch me up there and then and after just send me on to Oslo. The hospital in Oslo didn't have to "deal" with me there and then, so for them it didn´t matter if Haukeland resolved the problem or not.
In 2017-18, however, it peaked and I was tired of being thrown around. Haukeland was tired of being rejected by Riksen. And they agreed to perform an operation to try to relieve the pain. The titanium screws in my shoulder had a broken straight off and were moving around loosely in my upper arm. This they wanted to remove. I performed the surgery and they had trouble waking me up after. My body shorted after all the pain I got from removing the screws and plates. It went so far that they had to put in local anesthesia to deal with the pain. Only then could they send me up to the ward. Time has passed and I live daily with much pain. I manage to deal with it in a much better way than I ever could before though. It has been a long way to get here, but finally can I say that things are much better. There are also new things that have risen that will lead to new changes in the future. I'm going to post stories from my life and from the present on this blog.
A bit to get some frustration out. Stay tuned for more
Martin’s Liv 