2 January 2011

Alrighty. When last I whined, on December 26th, I was still in all kinds of pain with no sign of it letting up. My shoulder ached, but my back seriously hurt, and I could barely move. My fingers kept twitching towards the Vicodin, and I spent my time sitting here with a heat pad on my back, just hoping for a little bit of relief.

Then a couple of days later, one my my FB and cat blogger buddies, who knows about these things, suggested I might want to use ice instead. Ice, he said, helps in the acute phase of inflammation--the first couple of weeks. Since I trust him because he does know about these things, I did what he said: I started using ice 2-3 times a day.

Lo and behold, within a day the back was feeling a little better, and in just a couple of days the knife that had seemingly been jabbed into my back fell out, and all I'm left with is soreness.

So now I have a sore shoulder, sore chest, and sore back, but I'm not eyeing the Vicodin as if I desperately need it; I'm still taking Ibuprofen 3 times a day, but I'm down to half a Vicodin at night...I had been taking two.

So, it's progress.

All in all, I worry more about the back than I do the shoulder. Past experience tells me that all I have to do is move the wrong way and something will seize up again, so I'm moving carefully. I'm not doing anything I don't have to do, just in case. The shoulder will heal up eventually, and I don't think I need to worry about it twitching the wrong way and all those tendons starting up the Spasmodic Momba. It will simply be what it's going to be.

But I do need my back to get to the point where I don't worry about what moving about will do; I don't like the inactivity, and the weight is starting to pile back on (and surely that has nothing to do with dutch apple pie...or Oreo cookies...)

I have to admit, I realy want things to be back to near normal in a couple of weeks so that I can go back to Sierra at Tahoe and try again.

Surely I won't wipe out a second time.

Right?