Wednesday, July 13, 2011

It's Called Learning The Hard Way.

I will be 62 this coming September. Not by any means old, just not as young as I once was. Please note the absence of the word foolish there as in young and foolish. I may not be as young as I once was, but I still have my moments of foolish.

One such moment has been a full week in the making. On my first day back at work following my vacation, I pulled a muscle on the left side of my body. I felt the tug, but the pain didn't start until later in the day. Since I was at home, I decided to use the heating pad because it felt so good. Which, of course, meant that I totally ignored the instructions to ice recent injuries and heat older ones. Along with the advice to rest when one injures a muscle. I just kept heating the area and taking ibuprofen. It was working, or so I thought.

After 1 full week of heating the injury while continuing to work, and masking my body's requests for me to rest by taking the ibuprofen, I have now managed to strain just about all the muscles on the left side of my body. I am one solid mass of pain from armpit to groin and from the oblique muscle to the middle of my back near the spine. I discovered this when the ibuprofen quit on me last night. Sleep became impossible. The pain would not leave me alone.

At 6:30 this morning, with the phrase "Ice, ice, baby" running through my head, I called in sick and spent the day icing the muscles for 20 minutes every 2 hours. Plural. That, and a liberal application of Capzasin Gel seems to have calmed the muscles down. I believe that by this weekend, I'll be able to sit long enough to do a post and actually read some other ones.

10 comments:

  1. Sherry:

    Better keep it on ice, baby. :^)
    Hope you feel better soon.

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  2. A double shot of whiskey helps too...


    Bests,


    Sarge

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  3. Back when I was young and in shape I had problems like that, too. Since then I've come to realize that having absolutely no muscle mass whatsoever eliminates the possibility of pulling one. Instead of tennis and swimming, now I blog a lot.

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  4. Beach Bum,

    I admit, I am spending more time in a reclining position than I am sitting up, but it is improving.

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  5. Whit,

    I should be right as rain, now that I've had the dislocated rib put back in place. Don't ask, I don't know how I did it. All I did was push a bed across a rug.

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  6. Squatlo,

    Only shape I've ever been in is round. I'm just a smaller round now than I was a few months back. Got that way blogging a lot, and eating too much of the wrong things. Now I'm getting healthy, losing weight, and suffering. LOL

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  7. Sarge,

    I'm not sure whiskey would help me. I seem to have a slight sensitivity to it's effects, and O don't think my body would enjoy all that vomiting right now.

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  8. Do you know that song by "the Band"? "The shape I'm in", or at least thats the main line that repeats, I think that's the name. Anywho, have a listen, make ya feel better.

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  9. Fringe,

    Haven't figured out if I should be listening to "The Shape I'm In" or "Up On Cripple Creek". I'll try both, music has it's healing properties.

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