No pain no gain
A few weeks back I was starting to get pains in my shoulder. On a Friday I was thinking maybe I need to take a few days off. The next day I go over to a friend's place to help with their garden. Well, they needed some holes dug for cabbages and tomato plants. They had no shovel, but they did have a post hole digger, a cheap one w. no foot stands. Thus I was jamming it down w. my hands and getting the shock through my shoulders. That night it didn't feel at all bad, but next day I was pretty sore and took some ibuprofen and knocked off the exercises I had planned. Still, no big deal, I thought.
Come Monday I was in agony. By around noon it was bad enough I went in to the emergency room. They took an xray that showed nothing (as I could have told them), called it a strain, gave me some advice I was already following, a sling that did no good, and a prescription for otc drugs I was already taking. For two days I tried to soldier through it, but Thursday I had to go back in. With enough whining I got them to give me a scrip for Percocet. This at least let me get some sleep until Sunday. Also caved and got myself another air mattress. Not a cure, but it kept me from throwing myself under a bus until pain got to a manageable level.
Tried running once since. Not a good idea. Had me crippled again the next day from just a 30 minute run. Also found that reducing the weights on rotator strengthening exercises is not good enough. Have found, however, that the elliptical in the apt. complex "fitness center" doesn't do much damage as long as I don't use the arms at all. This has the added plus of allowing me to raise my heart rate to 150-160+, something I had difficulty doing while running or cycling.
Finally gave up on fixing the old laptop and caved and borrowed money to get a new one. Nice enough system. A bit slow, but being a cheap laptop running vista that's to be expected I hear. Have spent a few hours ripping all my cds and organizing all the songs into playlists. Had a bit of annoyance from the beginning in that I wasn't getting sound from dvds. I had thought it would be a hardware problem as it was occurring in both Windows Media Player and Realplayer and all other audio worked fine. Well, just to try things out I opened the Acer Arcade "Deluxe" and, sure enough, I got sound. Dammit! I might bring it in anyway to deal w. the sticky enter key. But since the dvd thing is a software issue I'm on my own.
Still no luck on the job hunt. Out on the street regardless come next week. Hope to borrow enough to put stuff into storage and to cover insurance for another week or so. Plan to get rid of the damn albatross after that.
Come Monday I was in agony. By around noon it was bad enough I went in to the emergency room. They took an xray that showed nothing (as I could have told them), called it a strain, gave me some advice I was already following, a sling that did no good, and a prescription for otc drugs I was already taking. For two days I tried to soldier through it, but Thursday I had to go back in. With enough whining I got them to give me a scrip for Percocet. This at least let me get some sleep until Sunday. Also caved and got myself another air mattress. Not a cure, but it kept me from throwing myself under a bus until pain got to a manageable level.
Tried running once since. Not a good idea. Had me crippled again the next day from just a 30 minute run. Also found that reducing the weights on rotator strengthening exercises is not good enough. Have found, however, that the elliptical in the apt. complex "fitness center" doesn't do much damage as long as I don't use the arms at all. This has the added plus of allowing me to raise my heart rate to 150-160+, something I had difficulty doing while running or cycling.
Finally gave up on fixing the old laptop and caved and borrowed money to get a new one. Nice enough system. A bit slow, but being a cheap laptop running vista that's to be expected I hear. Have spent a few hours ripping all my cds and organizing all the songs into playlists. Had a bit of annoyance from the beginning in that I wasn't getting sound from dvds. I had thought it would be a hardware problem as it was occurring in both Windows Media Player and Realplayer and all other audio worked fine. Well, just to try things out I opened the Acer Arcade "Deluxe" and, sure enough, I got sound. Dammit! I might bring it in anyway to deal w. the sticky enter key. But since the dvd thing is a software issue I'm on my own.
Still no luck on the job hunt. Out on the street regardless come next week. Hope to borrow enough to put stuff into storage and to cover insurance for another week or so. Plan to get rid of the damn albatross after that.