Week Two Progress

I hate how much pain I am in this week. That’s a strong word. I am acutely frustrated with how much pain I am in this week. Two more weeks until the doctor appointment to ask about the shoulder pain that I’ve been experiencing since April. This week’s tactic has been to try youtube shoulder exercises and do some of the arm exercises I used to. The result has been strenuous pain during and after, eventually subsiding to some pain relief several hours later. It does feel better than the initial starting point pain, but it takes a while to get there. Not really fun even if it does eventually improve for the evening. Today I couldn’t convince myself to hurt enough in the morning, so this afternoon I’m still at the really hurting point despite Tylenol, ibuprofen and bio-freeze. Bio-freeze helped initially, but not long lasting. I can get away with using it while I work from home, but what about when I go into the office? We're not even allowed to use smelly lotions. Pretty sure the intense menthol aroma would be frowned upon.

Even if the intensity of the pain is not horrific, it’s nearly relentlessness. It's thethe constancy that drives me nuts after a while. It wears on a person after a while. Doing even 10-20 minutes of painful exercises for the reward of lesser pain hours later is mildly encouraging, but not really a morale booster. They say keep moving more, and you’ll hurt less, but how much torture is normal to get there? This isn’t casually warming up stiff muscles with a leisurely walk. This is attempting those HIIT work-outs while wining, grimacing, and occasionally holding my breath because it hurts that much. Today with my opposite arm throbbing despite all he otcs, I guess I couldn’t push myself into quite enough pain to achieve delayed relief. Shame on me.

Also trying stretches and massage in addition to otcs.

Week 2 Trial & Error

Started looking for more shoulder/upper arm exercises on youtube. I try to only go with ones that are from doctors or physical therapists. Even then, I’m only going to try what I feel comfortable with.

Which exercises to try? Is it impingement? Rotator cuff? Tendonitis? Capsulitis? I decided to conduct an internet search to see if I could narrow down if anything sounded familiar. Yes, big mistake. Soooooo many nasty sounding things it could be. Bursitis, arthritis, adhesive capsulitis. Muscle pull, tear, or fracture (I didn’t know muscles could fracture?). Calcium deposits, tendon rupture, acromioclavicular separation, Distal Clavicle Osteolysis. Need I go on? I decided to stick with more basic search words (shoulder, biceps and triceps) and go from there. I know biceps are on the front of the arm, triceps on the back. Uhm, what’s on the sides?

Week One Status (what's next?)

Diligently keeping the pain log including what seems to hurt and when. Patterns seem pretty consistent, though intensities vary a bit.

The day starts out great, a tiny bit of soreness as if I used some muscles, which sometimes makes me excited that I’d like to work a few more and build up tolerance. But by noon I’m glad I didn’t do anything because I'm increasingly sore for seeminly no reason. By the evening shower, almost any movement hurts and triggers thoughts of dude, this cannot be normal.

The idea to keep moving slow and gentle was because I read something that if you give yourself too much rest, muscles atrophy and everything will hurt. I thought I'd given it plenty of rest, so I was trying to not be so much of a wimp.

This is getting old really fast. I said I would continue the current status quo for a week. What to try for the next week? Cuz I’ve got to admit, I’m itching to try something differnt. Even if I have no idea what to do.

The general biggie recommendation you hear is "ice and rest." Ok, uhm, I have a desk job. I do most carrying of tiny objects with my other hand. The only activities difficult to avoid are shower and getting dressed. Those don't hurt until I try them, and by that time it's too late, and it's also over, so it's also pointless. Like I put on a shirt, ouch, that hurt. It's not like I need to do that repeatedly therefore I think ok, maybe I should stop and rest. I've even modified those activities to use the opposite hand/arm/shoulder as much as possible.

Icing the shoulder is not very easy. I could hold an ice pack over the unhappy parts, but then I can't do anything else. I've gotten wraps and packs, and the only way to try to hold it in place ends up hurting more and strangling my armpit. So it's not like I can ice it several times a day unless I simply go to the freezer, grab an ice pack, and then stand around for a while waiting to feel better. I don't have that kind of extra time until after work. Then half the time it hurts to put the ice pack on anyway, so I'm not motivated to keep it there.

I suppose the other thing I can do is try those youtube videos. Already watched a couple. Hmm. For consistency, does one try only one video per week? Otherwise if you try out a whole bunch, and pain and soreness is delayed, who knows which one really sucker punched you.

I did google articles on the difference between soreness and pain. It feels like I have both. Had to guffaw over the part where it says "it may be time to seek medical attention. Ha. Seek, yes. Then wait. In my area, anyway. Three months average to get an appointment anywhere besides urgent/care Doc In The Box places. So I'm waiting and trying to think of what to attempt next.

Pain Log and the Power of Blogging

I didn’t stay quiet for long, did I?

I’ve admitted this blog is mainly for me to work through my weight and health challenges. So don’t be surprised when I change my mind. Sometimes writing it out helps me work things out. I realized I haven’t necessarily been very consistent with my efforts. Aside from the almost 6 week mandatory post surgery rest, I’ve probably been all over the place. Feel better? - Do more! Ouch, it hurts? – Why would that be? Kidding. But still. I decided I need to get with it and keep an actual pain log and do something consistently for at least a week and track and see what happens. I tried to figure out a pain log before, but I kept changing my mind on the format. There wasn’t enough room in my existing health-tracking calendar. What to develop instead? Or overhaul my existing tracking instead? Excel can create graphs (not that I have made recent graphs, still there’s potential). Word has more space. You wouldn’t believe how much trouble I had finding amiable free online calendar templates. Should I color-code things? How many days do I want to be able to see at a time? In short, I got bogged down and didn’t track my aches and pains anyway. I believe I have a calendar format to my liking now, so let’s do this.

Here is my resolve for the week.

• Keep a log of my aches and pains, when or what seems to make them worse, and use the 1-10 scale.
• Move my ____ shoulder slowly and gradually at the beginning of the day to loosen up.
• Keep moving my blasted shoulder throughout the day and keep moving as long as it’s not significant pain. Power through the vague achiness and only modify things if it’s the ouch – something is really wrong pain.
• Take ginger and turmeric supplements at least twice a day. Was going to try this anyway. They’re supposed to be good to reduce inflammation.

Could do more, but don’t want to make it so complex that it’s harder to keep up with everything. There’s proof for the power of blogging. I might not have remembered how sore I was last year merely trying new exercises in the first place. I thought after surgery I wouldn’t be starting over square one, but maybe I am. Thus the idea to power through mild discomfort and keep going. Besides, what is the exact difference between soreness versus pain? I mean, soreness does sometimes seem like a general mild pain. We’ll leave that debate for another day.

Contemplating

I’ve got appointments set up for a sports medicine doctor and a rheumatologist in the next couple of months (they’re booked out a bit). In the meantime I’m looking at youtube videos for exercise ideas for the shoulder and upper arm. Not sure what’s wrong with it, so I don't know what exercises help or hurt. At least I’m discovering definitively what movements cause pain here, there, and everywhere so I can report to the docs. Taking otc pills and various topicals. Looking at supplements and food choices to decrease inflammation. Doing the leg lift exercises recommended last time for the knee. I’m up to 10 pounds, and need to go get heavier weights to pile on. In the meantime, depending on the day, it hurts to write and type. Guessing I should spend more time researching how to help myself, so that’s where I’ll be if I’m not here.

The Downfall of Doc-in-the-Box

Been putting off scheduling an appointment for my shoulder. It’s been bugging me since April. Now my upper arm hurts. Glack. If I ask my PCP, he wants an MRI before even looking at it. You go to a walk-in clinic, they say you’re not dying, go see your PCP. They used to only do that for Emergency centers. So that sucks. I heard I could try a rheumatologist, but they throw long-term (permanent) drugs at you so I don’t really want to try that either. I tried to schedule an appointment with the last Dr. I saw for the knee (she was nice and helpful) but she’s booked until October. Ok, I’m not dying. I get it. I can still use my other arm, chug some otc meds and simply not do certain activities, like writing with a pen. Guess I could make a game out of it, like see how much weight I can try to lose by then. Since they usually say everything is caused by being overweight. Another reason I delayed going this long.

Guess I’m mildly irritated. Walking is good for weight loss, but isn’t pleasant since my knee and leg swells up. I can only do my arm supposed HIIT exercises with one arm now, so I’m not sure how high intensity they truly are at that point . . . Not sure what good exercises are left out there besides swimming. Probably time to try youtube and see what they recommend. Maybe I'll be all better by October. Yeah right.

Year Recap

It’s been a little over a year since I started semi-seriously attempting to be more active. I’m kind of on the fence what to think. My perception is that I feel worse now than I did a year ago, which is disheartening. Though if I glance over the posts a year back, there was a lot of mention of pain there too. A lot of that was pain after doing exercises. Now I seem to have static chronic pain no matter what I'm doing. It's not a horrendous level of pain, but the chronic part is starting to get to me. This hurts, that hurts, everything hurts.

I’m still afraid to do any neck stretches. Those did cause immense pain last year. The arm exercises I did at the time made me so sore, and it did seem to take forever to build up stamina. Right now though, I’m avoiding using my one arm and shoulder, and I experience pain in basic daily tasks such as showering or getting dressed. A year ago was before my foot pain, and then my knee pain. I can’t even recall any event that motivated me to try to improve.

It could be worse; but I guess I had hoped I might eventually feel a little better, given the effort I’ve put in. I’m not gung-ho by any means. I’m trying to make more gradual sustainable modifications. I’ll try to keep the faith.

I still think the work wellness coach is a joke. We can leave that for another day.

Got different cooling sheets and a cooling cover for my weighted blanket. Scared to use the blanket in case moving it somehow makes my shoulder hurt. It doesn't hurt while I'm moving it around, but I guess it could cause issues 24-48 hours later. Who knows what else I did with my shoulder that felt fine at the time, by 2 days later.

What went right today

You may think I’m bipolar, to suddenly post about something not being negative or frustrating. To be fair, I prefaced this journey saying my intent was to use this as a sounding board to myself, working through issues. When things aren’t negative issues, one doesn’t really need to write about them so much. You’re to busy being happy and going about your business not writing. Back to things that went well today.

I taped my knee and it felt much better than the compression sleeve (when it doesn’t slide down in 60 seconds or less). I was able to walk more and got 8000 steps in by the time I left work. Yay! I rarely hit 10k, and 8k is my mini-goal for the time being. The “not a complete loser” goal. Not 10k, but not horrible. I actually read somewhere that 8k can be a decent goal for elderly people to achieve significant improved benefits. Not sure how elderly I am, but I’ll take it. 4/5 of the way there, at least.

I was able to walk even on my afternoon break. Usually I start off ok, morning and lunch, but by the afternoon, I’m so tired and sore and achy I have to force myself to simply get away from my desk for a few minutes. Today I felt fine. Very rare. Probably extraordinarily rare. I’ll take the win. Double Yay.

My newer pants are comfortably lose. Not saying I can fit into a size down, since my middle is the largest part of me, and the legs are always a bit lose to start off with. But they are to the comfy stage where they would not strangle me if I over-ate and then slouched in half or something. Not that either of those things are good. But you get the idea. For me, standing up in pants and having them fit is one thing. Still feeling comfortable sittign down after lunch is another thing, even if I don’t eat too much. Just sayin'.

I had a nice conversation with a coworker in the breakroom about the trials of being old and overweight. No idea what her name is, as she works in another department, but it was a nice chat. It wasn’t just an angry gripe-fest either. It was an encouraging “hang in there” type of exchange. I didn’t think she looked very old and only moderately overweight, but she’s had some challenges and told me about her ideas and so on. It was the type of conversation that left me feeling more chipper and energized. I’m generally introverted and not one to reap energy from talking to others, so this is saying something.

Although I’m avoiding using my right arm and shoulder for much (the let it rest stage) it’s not feeling too bad so far. By this time of day I usually do something inadvertently that causes an unfortunate stab and regret. So far so good. Small mile-stone, but I’ll take it. Pain-free is pain-free. Having pain or soreness in my knee, shoulder, and neck so much of the time, this is a welcome change.