nerves

My neck has been hurting for a year. Sometimes a little better, sometimes a little worse. It’s mostly uncomfortable to sit, slightly less uncomfortable to stand or lie down. 

I blamed it on the bed and the pillow, but I changed both of those (the pillow multiple times). I blamed it on climbing, but I got belay glasses so that I don’t have to look up when my climbing partner is up on the wall. I blamed it on the drive, but I thought this bigger car would be better for my body than the little one was, not worse.

I went on vacation and nothing changed. I went to the chiropractor and nothing changed. I got massages every month and nothing changed.

Last week I was climbing with a group of women, and one of them, who practices Chinese medicine, mentioned that she does both Chinese medicine and physical therapy for her back.

A lightbulb went off. 

There are professionals covered by insurance whose job it is to make pain like this go away. 

I had my first PT appointment this morning. I dutifully wrote down all the things about my wrist surgeries and my ulnar nerve problems and my shoulder catching. 

The PT moved my arm and had me move my head and measured all sorts of things. At one point, she had me sit straight, hands on my lap, and she ran her fingers down my arms.

“Can you feel one more than the other?” she asked.

“I think your right hand is actually colder than the left,” I said. 

She switched her hands. 

Nope. I just can’t feel what’s happening to my right arm as much as I can what’s happening to my left.

So that’s weird. 

It turns out that those same nerves - the median and ulnar nerves - that have long bugged me in my hand have now decided to bug me in my neck. I’ve cricked them up somehow. Nerve problems seem to be my thing.

Now I have a bunch of exercises and things to do. And my $100 pillow just arrived (ordered before the appointment). I’m hoping there is hope on the horizon.

But also, I’m still going climbing tonight. 

turmeric

So here is a weird thing. 

My shoulder has been hurting - first a little and then quite badly - for about two months. For the first couple of weeks I ignored it (it got worse), and then for over a month I took ibuprofen for it just about every day (it got worse). The most painful things were reaching back to grab something (e.g. purse in the back seat of the car) and lifting my arm straight up to the side.

Ice helped, briefly, but the effects didn't last.

Finally, a week or so ago, I decided no more with the ibuprofen. It's a white substance, and white powders and crystals will kill you (see also: sugar, flour, cocaine, heroine, meth, salt). And it wasn't helping anyway.

Plus I started reading about ibuprofen and what it does to your stomach. Not cool.

So I stopped taking ibuprofen. I was in pain, though.

In order to feel like I was doing something - anything - to help with the pain and swelling, I started taking turmeric. Specifically, I started mixing a teaspoon of turmeric and a bit more than a teaspoon of honey into a paste, and then adding some boiling water. I drink it like a tea, even though some of the powder stays in precipitate and is chalky in my mouth. It tastes, well, not great. I think it would be better if I added ginger or something. But it's tolerable.

My doctor friend S. who used to live in Universe City was in town this weekend and told me that turmeric is one of the only herbal remedies that has actually been proven to do what it supposedly does, namely reduce inflammation. (It also has anti carcinogenic properties.)

I haven't been icing my shoulder at all, due to having a houseguest and some camping. Also  due to frustration that it wasn't helping.

Yesterday, I noticed a strange lack of pain in my arm, despite having worn a backpack the day before, which usually makes it flair up. I didn't want to jinx it, so I didn't move my arm much, but last night I tried, just once, to lift my arm up to the side past shoulder level. It worked. Not only did it work, but there was only a moment of stiffness and pain at shoulder level, instead of it getting caught there.

I tried again, again gently, this morning. Even less pain.

I don't want to make any assumptions too early, but this is sort of freaking me out. Modern medicine totally failed me in this instance. But turmeric might work? As a skeptic who tries to keep an open mind (or maybe more of an open mind that tries to be a skeptic) and who generally thinks the scientific method works quite well, I am surprised. In a good way, but surprised nonetheless.

chemically

There was some sort of truck making some sort of awful noise outside my window for about four hours this yesterday two mornings ago.* It also smelled some sort of chemically. I had to shut all the windows and gently roast inside my apartment. (It's not that hot out anymore, but it is sunny and this house is completely lacking in, oh, insulation, having been built quite a few years ago.)

I know everyone has been waiting breathlessly for an update on my shoulder nerve impingement situation. 

It's getting better, I think. It's slow, but I can sleep at night without medication and without waking from pain, which seems like an improvement. I slept on it funny last night, and still it's not bad enough to take ibuprofen.

I seem to have more movement in it, although I still can't lift it past shoulder level without pain when it is straight. I can lift it past shoulder level with my elbow bent and my hand straight up - I couldn't do that a week ago.

So that is good. 

* I opened this screen yesterday two days ago and then forgot about it. Oops.

absurd

Gone West felt like Liberia yesterday. 

That is an exaggeration, of course. It is never as humid in warm weather in Gone West as it is all the time in Liberia, but I stepped outside yesterday into hot air smelling of burning wood. 

In Liberia, people burn the jungle to clear fields for planting, and the air fills with smoke and the smell of burning wood.

Sometimes I struggle to imagine explaining to modern parents in the US exactly what sort of playing we did as kids in Liberia. Example: after a field was burned, we loved to go play in it, in the soot and the still smoldering bits. While wearing rubber flipflops. 

Safety first, guys. Safety first. 

Somehow we did not get hurt. Sometimes I think kids live up to what you expect of them. 

...

I am beginning to be seriously annoyed with my shoulder nerve impingement situation. 

I re-injured it on Friday. 

Would you like to know how I re-injured it? Because it was ridiculous.

I was in a cafe with a friend, and a woman came in with a baby. She set the baby's seat down on the floor next to me while she hugged an older man. Meanwhile, the older man's wife tried to take the baby out of the seat, and couldn't figure out how to unlatch that middle latch across the baby's chest - the one that you push in the middle button and pull the pieces out to the side.

I braced my right arm against the table while I leaned over and pushed the button with my left.

Bam. Re-injured right arm.

It's completely absurd. This is absurd. The situation is absurd. Arms should not be that wimpy.

So I'm annoyed.

placeholder

After careful consideration and experimentation, I have decided that watermelon is the perfect summer food, due to its hydrating properties. In fact, I think it may have evolved specifically to keep people alive during hot summers.

I have also learned not to eat too much watermelon late in the evening if I don't want to have to get up during the night.

...

My shoulder is still in bad shape. After lots of reading of the internets and general thinking, my current theory (after cycling through rotator cuff and pinched nerve in cervical spine) is that I have a pinched nerve in my shoulder, possibly because my shoulder was a lot stronger when I was doing martial arts, and the muscles have atrophied while the ligaments stayed longer. Now my shoulder has too much play, possibly.

(I made that all up.)

I am theoretically icing my shoulder and arm every day and taking a round of ibuprofen. In practice, what's happening is that I forget to ice or take ibuprofen until I wake up in pain in the middle of the night. 

I tried sleeping on my left side (the injury is on the right) but letting my right arm dangle like that was horrible for my pain level, so now I'm sleeping on my right side to hold the shoulder together.

It's not working.

I might need to put my arm in a sling to rest it. Sob.

...

In other news, there is no other news. 

mystery

Last night I wore my long arm brace to sleep because my golf elbow was paining me.

(If you were not around for The Wrist Saga, you can find it here. The long arm brace looks something like the long arm brace in that post, except that at some point a physical therapist decided that I would be better off with a brace that went over the top of my thumb and inside of my elbow so that my elbow was not compressed inside the brace. So it's kind of the inverse of the long brace in that post.)

It isn't super comfortable to sleep with the long brace on, but as long as I prop my arm up on a pillow, it isn't bad. I fell asleep quickly. 

At some point, well before my alarm went off, I woke up and realized that the brace was no longer on my arm.

It was lying on the ground next to the bed.

There are four pieces of velcro that hold that brace onto my arm. 

I have no recollection of taking it off. 

I don't normally sleepwalk, but apparently in my sleep I tear off my arm brace. Possibly in some sort of frenzy of uncomfortableness (even though it really isn't very uncomfortable). It's a mystery. Okay, a tiny little mystery, but a mystery nonetheless.