Posts Tagged ‘aching muscles’
Knocked Silly
We were in the backyard playing with Asher off-leash on Monday. I had just returned from the health clinic in River Falls where I’d been given the second shot of a vaccine for shingles. I like to use my arms as much as possible after a shot to disperse the injection and reduce localized pain. Roughhousing with the canine was helpful right up until it wasn’t at all.
Asher was with Cyndie when her phone rang. I was downhill from them, sitting on the ground. As Cyndie answered the call, Asher suddenly bolted straight for me. I barely made it to my knees before he had closed the distance and he wasn’t slowing down. Unable to make a move to dodge 70 pounds of beast barreling toward me, I turned my head as Asher made impact.
The collision knocked off my prescription sunglasses, sent my hat flying, and threw me to the ground, face down with my head pointing downhill. I don’t remember dropping the gloves I was holding. I lay still for a while trying to establish my level of consciousness.
I wondered if Asher was okay and whether my ear was bleeding. It felt like my glasses had cut me. I decided Asher was okay because I suddenly became aware of him zooming faster than ever back and forth across my prone body with one of my gloves in his mouth like a prize.
Reaching for my ear, my hand came back dry, so, no cut. Cyndie missed witnessing the collision but soon after, deduced something had happened and walked over to me while continuing with her phone conversation. I wobbly made my way to my feet and sought to retrieve my glove from the dog who was masquerading as a freight train on amphetamines.
“I think he may have given me a concussion,” I said to Cyndie. Asher showed no sign of damage to his thick head. I was feeling tender behind my right ear, opening and closing my jaw several times in search of some kind of assessment of damages.
The collision brought on a headache that lasted for two days. By Tuesday morning it was becoming hard to tell whether my achiness was due to the shingles vaccine or the dog collision. It’s safe to assume it was both. I was beginning to hurt all over. It seemed logical to reduce my activity for a day or two, which worked well in conjunction with days of horrid air quality due to more wildfire smoke from Canada.
Yesterday afternoon, sleep beckoned and I succumbed to a heavy nap for more than an hour. Upon waking, it felt like I’d been knocked silly.
Because, well… yeah, I was.
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Aha Moment
After resting my aching legs for a day –of which the left leg was proving to be the more uncomfortable one– I tried a brief, easy solo ride on the road bike yesterday afternoon. All the weekend guests had departed but I hung around for the rest of the day, mostly because of the simple fact that I could. I will be driving home this morning.
Yesterday, I experienced an “aha moment” during the first mile of spinning the cranks of the road bike. My left side still felt “funny.” Weak is one way I can describe it. I began to perceive a sensation that suddenly occurred to me to NOT be specifically coming from my left quadricep. I had a sense that what I was feeling in the leg muscle was more of a referred pain.
All at once, it hit me that I might actually be noticing the first signs of a hip problem.
Where do I pick up my membership card for that club of unpleasantness?
I rode a mere 11 miles and used battery-powered assistance the whole way. My goal was to allow my legs to do a little spinning without working them very hard against resistance. Mission accomplished.
Floating in the lake after I got back, the discomfort throughout my body seemed to be growing more and more aligned with what my mind was now telling me. Now I am in the place of wondering whether my mind is responding to the vague pains of my body or if it’s the other way around. Is my body starting to react to thoughts that my hip might be growing arthritic?
That’s pretty easy to test. I’ll start imagining my hip is perfectly healthy and see if the vague pains and noticeable weakness go away.
Anecdotally –if you believe this– I did recently decide I should be putting a pillow between my knees at night in bed when I’m sleeping. I can’t explain why I renewed this practice, but maybe it’s related to the possibility of a hip issue and my intuitive self detecting it would be a prudent thing to do.
I’m no Orthopedist, but it’s all making sense to me at this moment.
Or, maybe it’s not the joint, itself. The Mayo Clinic offers this:
Problems within the hip joint itself tend to result in pain on the inside of your hip or your groin. Hip pain on the outside of your hip, upper thigh or outer buttock is usually caused by problems with muscles, ligaments, tendons and other soft tissues that surround your hip joint.
https://www.mayoclinic.org/symptoms/hip-pain/basics/definition/sym-20050684
The location of my pain is more on the outside of the hip and, as I originally suspected, my upper thigh.
I’m going to prescribe some extra rest and see what that does for me. See if it gives me any additional “ahas.”
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Relative Something 