Posts Tagged ‘pain’
Pain
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dull
unceasing
pain
radiating
stinging
burning
achy
sharp
waves
abrupt
chronic
reaching
unidentifiable
unfamiliar
tender
local
emotional
biting
raging
fading
grating
lasting
massive
undeniable
masked
referred
visceral
deep
squeezing
gnawing
cramping
silent
edgy
temporary
pressing
effective
protective
ignored
forgotten
unrelenting
throbbing
incapacitating
intolerable
mysterious
vanishing
changing
fleeting
processed
treated
deleted
defeated
going
going
gone
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Beautiful Adventures
It was another beautiful day in Wintervale-be-gone yesterday where the dog and cat are strong, the horses are good-looking, and the scenery is above average. I was able to get out for a short bike ride into the wind in a test of my bike with no battery installed. I finally purchased the cover that replaces the battery on the down tube. It required a call to Trek to learn it was only available from the distributor QBP (Quality Bicycle Products) and only able to be ordered by bike shops.
I kept telling myself the bike was so much lighter, that it would be noticeably less effort to pedal it up the hills without electric assist. I think it almost was.
Cyndie has done an absolutely heroic job of working to stop the spread of leaf rust fungus on our wild black raspberry plants lately. Inspired by success from the daunting project last summer, she set out to continue this year, fighting the spread of this highly infectious threat, diligently bagging infected plants she digs up and then cleaning and disinfecting her tools, boots, and clothes afterward.
While she was busy finding a nest of eggs nestled in the middle of the bushes, I set out to cut one last trail that had been passed by the last time I was out with the power trimmer. Just a small distance that wouldn’t take very much time. Was that why I may have been less attentive to every step I was taking?
My foot landed on a protruding root and my ankle rolled severely enough to drop me in a heap of anguish and pain. I have strained my ankles so many times in my life that this was an all-too-familiar predicament.
I stayed flat on my back for a long time, holding my foot in the air above me while waiting for the initial sharp pain to calm and trying to think through my options. It felt like a medium level of severity but I wanted to be overcautious in hope of recovering from this little misstep as soon as physically possible.
I phoned Cyndie but she didn’t answer. I tried texting. I propped my boot on the trunk of a tree and stayed on my back to ponder my next move. I could wait for her to find me. I tried my loud shrill whistle to see if it would trigger her to look at her phone. I thought she could bring down an ankle brace or crutches or, worst case, help me get back up to the house if it seemed so bad when I finally stood up that I didn’t want to put weight on it.
I laid long enough for the pain to calm and the mosquitos to find me so I decided it was time to stand up and make an assessment. I could put weight on it but walking was quite a hobbling limp. All part of the adventure in this beautiful place that is our home.
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Sleep Interrupted
I was sleeping so soundly, Cyndie couldn’t rouse me on her first try Sunday night. Her pain and concern were growing as the night went on and she wasn’t getting any rest. She re-read the information sent home after the knee surgery to confirm instructions if she suddenly experienced pain in her chest.
At midnight, she successfully woke me. We would be making a visit to the emergency room to find out if there might be a blood clot that made its way to her lung.
Despite our somewhat rural location, our health services are only 10-minutes from our home. We quickly received a blunt introduction to the strict COVID-19 protocols in place. Segregation, isolation, socially distanced to the extreme. We couldn’t even get in the door until Cyndie located the phone on which she was grilled with a 20-question virus threat interrogation, the result of which turned me around and sent me back to wait in the car.
In the cold.
By myself.
Why is this all about me? Only because testing confirmed there was no blood clot and Cyndie was discharged a couple hours later to wait out the pain at home. Two possible causes were “compressed tissue” from duration of anesthetization slowly uncompressing or muscle pain from distorted sleeping position during her two-days of narcotic couching it.
Let’s get back to my plight. It was the middle of the night before a Monday workday and I was stuck in a cold car in a deserted parking lot. ‘Just sleep while I wait’ was the logical choice. How hard can that be? Don’t allow yourself to start wondering if it actually was a blood clot.
When the voice on the phone finally gave Cyndie permission to enter and the double doors swung open, I stood and watched her limp down the long deserted hallway alone and thought of all the coronavirus patients who take a similar walk alone and never see their family again.
Biding my time alone in my car, I had the opportunity to practice, over and over, returning my mind to the present moment and recognizing I was just fine and Cyndie was in the care of trained professionals.
Thankfully, upon returning home somewhere after 2:00 a.m., I was able to quickly fall asleep in the comfy warmth of our bed and reclaim the wee latter portion of a healthy night’s sleep, aided by the knowledge that Cyndie’s pain wasn’t caused by a blood clot.
By bedtime last night, I’m happy to report, the pain was becoming more tolerable and her spirits were improving accordingly. That afforded us both a much better and well-deserved full night’s sleep.
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Delicate Balance
In the end, we have turned down all the quotes for resurfacing our deck because the costs all exceeded our available funds. The only affordable option was to buy the lumber and do the work ourselves with the generous support of willing friends.
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We have already begun experimenting with several techniques for removing the old boards, with varying success. Yesterday, I resorted to buying a hole-saw bit that would allow drilling around a stripped-out screw to free up a board and leave the screw behind to be extracted with a vice-grip plier.
I don’t mind working slow, but at the pace I am achieving, the 815-square-foot deck surface will not be completed in a weekend.
Initially, I envisioned getting all the old wood removed before focusing on installing the new boards, but then I heard a suggestion of just removing one board at a time and replacing it. That way the project could start and stop at any time without the deck being in total disarray.
One big challenge for me if this project ends up lasting for a long time is the delicate balance I am trying to manage in dealing with a bulging disc in my lower back. When it flares up, my mobility is greatly hampered.
I had high hopes of making big progress yesterday removing screws from boards, but a sharp twang of breathtaking pain suddenly limited my success to a single board.
The reason I describe the challenge of my bulging disc as a balancing act is because of the way the problem manifests. For most of my days I experience no pain and no limitations of movement. Then, without warning, the slightest movement will unleash the hint of a stab that takes my breath away and sends an adrenaline spike that contracts my muscles in an attempt to prevent a deeper stab.
Moments later, I am able to move like normal, yet with an understandable precautionary stiffness in fear the worst outcome is just as possible, likely even, if I make one wrong move.
I just have no idea which movement will end up being a wrong one.
A natural response to this scenario is to walk in the stiffest posture possible, but that isn’t a realistic solution. Instead, I returned to my core-strengthening exercises and flexibility stretches. This routine is the opposite of maintaining the stiffest posture possible and allows me to move very close to normal.
But it still leaves me in a delicate balance, because the bulge in my disc doesn’t instantaneously recede. That takes time. Weeks.
In the meantime, I proceed walking and leaning forward within an immeasurably small fraction of that startling reminder the bulge is in close proximity to spinal nerves.
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Delaying Complaining
If nothing else has become obvious in my ten years of blogging, my quick tendency to complain about the simplest of ailments that befall me must stand out as a typical trait. Whether it’s my degenerating discs or the next poison ivy outbreak, I usually fall far short of stoically sucking up the pain and suffering privately.
Misery loves company. Don’t I know it.
I will be honest that this was exactly my first inclination when one of my recently turned sixty-year-old teeth fractured under an unexpected bite of a chicken wing bone. Sadly, this calamity contributed to spoiling our second visit to that quaint diner on the way up to the lake last Wednesday.
As I moped with Cyndie for the remainder of the drive up to Wildwood, wondering how and where I might seek treatment for this busted molar, there was a general sense that my long holiday weekend had been totally spoiled. Luckily, we had enough time in the car for me to have a change of attitude. 
For the first time that I can remember, I decided I would squelch my urge to share news of my woes, in order to avoid engendering focus on my problem and tarnishing the rest of the joyous holiday festivities. It helped a little that my dentist returned my call Wednesday and remotely diagnosed that my description of the broken tooth cleared me of any need for emergency treatment.
I spent the weekend trying to remember to take small bites and only chew on the other side of my mouth, and successfully kept my problem from everyone except Cyndie, Elysa, and Julian. In the end, I think doing so worked out as well for me as for my intention of not distracting others with my problem. By not talking about it, I automatically tended to dwell on it less.
There was one interesting complication that developed when I called my dentist’s office. Not only were they closed for Thursday and Friday of the holiday weekend, but also for the following week in order to allow their entire staff a long summer vacation.
What good timing I have.
Fortunately, their away message offered a direct contact number for the dentist. She said her family has chosen to have a stay-cation and she will be in town this week.
She has offered to take a look at my tooth late this afternoon to see if she can offer some relief, sooner than later.
Thank goodness. I definitely have no complaints to offer about that.
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Pushing Through
It has been a long stretch of time since I played either of my guitars. Lack of playing tends to become its own feedback loop. Arthritis in my hand discouraged me from pulling out my instruments as often as I used to, and not playing regularly led to the loss of calluses on the fingertips of my left hand. Lack of calluses fed into an inclination to not bother playing and the situation dragged on and on.
Alas, recent activity to ready myself for the Tour of Minnesota bicycling and camping week triggered thoughts about bringing my travel guitar this year. Before fulfilling that idea, which I said back in February that I planned to do, I figured I should check out whether I could still form chords with my left hand.
I was a little rusty, but mostly functional. My session was rewarding enough that I felt inspired to try a second time a couple of days later. That went even better, despite the tenderness of starting the process of developing new calluses. Then I moved to reach a particular position and experienced the classic jolt of a painful joint.
(No, Mary, I have not had the surgery performed yet, despite your wise advice to not wait. The doctor preferred waiting, and I chose to not try convincing him otherwise.)
After that stab of pain, the rest of the session tended to become increasingly more comfortable. It seemed a little counterintuitive at first, but then I remembered a similar experience during a lumbar disc pain episode.
The body has a keen ability to constrict movement in the presence of pain, but remaining oblivious to what is happening in these situations can allow that avoidance of pain to become its own malady. I made a surprising discovery during an early assessment of my condition when physical therapy was prescribed.
The therapist asked me to show them how far I could bend over to reach toward my toes.
“Bend over!?”
My thinking was that I couldn’t bend at all without suffering that stabbing pain. That is why I was moving around like a stiff zombie!
So, I set about showing her how I could barely lean forward at all. To my surprise, those initial hints of possible pain that normally freeze any further motion did not get any worse as I pushed through them. I was able to bend a lot farther than I believed possible.
The same thing happened with my hand yesterday. The avoidance of pain had kept me from trying to play the guitar, bringing a mindset that it would no longer be possible. Pushing past that warning message of pain proved there is still some function left in the old joint.
I don’t have the strength I used to, but I can still manage a few chords for a reasonably short duration of pickin’ and grinnin’.
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Shared Pain
It’s the time of year when the bucks traversing our woods are leaving plenty of calling cards. I always wonder if we are seeing marks from just one, or if there are competitors making their presence known.
Cyndie came upon this spot of cleared leaves beside the trail yesterday morning.
Just a short distance away, I found a tree with bark scraped off.
Delilah took particular interest in scents along the path, so I expect there is a lot of aroma communication going on out there.
It is much nicer experiencing the deer activity in our forest than it is dodging them on the road. There have been an unsettling number of deer hit by traffic and staining the road surface on my route to the day-job this year.
If one of the local hunters don’t take down the buck that is visiting our property, I’m hoping I might get a chance for a shed antler.
It will be an opportunity to scour our woods, off-trail with Delilah after the hunting season is over. I just need her health to improve enough that we can ease her activity restrictions.
She had a second treatment from a dog chiropractor last night, where Cyndie learned of a massage technique we are hoping will continue to relieve Delilah of her pain.
The dog and I are on parallel paths of recovery. I’m not using massage to calm my troublesome back, but have returned to my regimen of exercises and stretches to strengthen my core and improve flexibility.
It doesn’t seem like it should work as well has it has for me, but in a rather short amount of time I have regained a remarkable amount of mobility and am enjoying much less pain. The lingering symptom is a constant dull reminder of not-quite-pain in the lumbar region of my spine that occasionally warns me with brief increases of sensation a couple of notches down from the real thing.
Little hints that I’m not all good, even though I’m not feeling all that bad.
I understand exactly what Delilah is going through.
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Epic Normal
Some days are just days. The simple steps of tending to basic maintenance and chores that happen every day can become so routine they fade to obscurity.
Yet, living it feels anything but obscure. Each simple accomplishment brings huge satisfaction.
This weekend, having our son, Julian, visit to pick up a package that Fed-Ex delivered here, and recruiting his help with some compost distribution and wood splitting, were particularly rewarding.
We used the Grizzly to pull trailer loads of wood, and with him driving, I gained a perspective of the squeaky brakes that helped to push me toward finally taking it in to professionals for service. Julian helped me get the ATV secured in the bed of our truck and I dropped it off in River Falls.
It could be several weeks until I see it again, so we are hoping there won’t be significant need for clearing the driveway of snow until well after that.
Maybe in a sympathetic response to Delilah’s painful condition, I experienced a return of degenerating disc symptoms as I leaned forward to pick up a piece of firewood, which brought a quick end to the delightful progress we were accomplishing. I’m on limited duty once again.
Luckily, that presented no disruption to a planned visit from a co-worker and her husband. She wanted to surprise him with the trip because he has a big appreciation for the majesty of horses, despite little access to them. Cyndie was wise enough to guide some time inside the fence for them, a step that is reserved for very few visitors.
As always, Legacy proved the consummate companion for the interaction with his herd-leading confident calmness. Dezirea couldn’t spare but a moment to accommodate us, as her attention was otherwise fixed on something in the distance that I couldn’t see.
Regardless the obscuring nature of the inherent normal-ness of the weekend, it all felt perfectly epic.
Given the right perspective, living in the moment can provide that result.
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How’s Everybody?
Basically, we are all good, but there are some health concerns that continue to linger for some of the Wintervale crew. Time has not healed all wounds.
After the most recent hoof trimming, Cayenne’s showing a tiny bit of improvement. What we cling to there is that she is, at the very least, not worse. She still shows a fair amount of hesitation on her movements, but she doesn’t appear to be in extreme pain.
It’s possible she may have developed a habit of anticipating pain, and she still limps because that is what she has grown used to doing. It sometimes looks like she steps gingerly to protect herself, not because it hurts too much to walk normal.
Now, Delilah, on the other hand, is behaving quite the opposite. She keeps trying to act like she is fine, but continues to have moments of extreme pain. On Tuesday, we resorted to ordering x-rays of her spine and a more thorough blood analysis.
The results of her blood work are not in yet, but the x-ray showed a minor compression between discs 3 and 4. We were told there also appeared to be some abnormal marks or possible lesions on those vertebrae, which the vet is hoping the blood analysis will inform.
We have returned to restricting her movements to a bare minimum. Regardless, she continues to maintain a pretty happy attitude between moments of looking like she’d prefer to do nothing more than lay down and convalesce.
It’s been a long summer of rehabilitation for Cyndie’s shoulder, but it’s not over yet. She continues to have regular physical therapy appointments to improve range of motion. The good news after her most recent follow-up with the surgeon was that he deemed it unnecessary to put her under and break the scar tissue by force. The bad news was the alternative being extended PT with painful aggressive measures to do the same thing.
The therapist used the infamous “cupping therapy” to stretch the scarred tissue across the grain. Makes sense to us, despite a broad belief that cupping is pseudo-science and any benefits are from a placebo effect. Cyndie is growing tired of the pain from her exercises and the ongoing need to push her limits of stretching and rotation.
At the same time, she continues to find ways to function in her daily activities with only minor limitations.
The rest of us are enjoying a grace period of good health. The chickens will be seeing snow for the first time in their lives. Pequenita is happy to be an indoor cat. We brought the horses in out of the windy wet precipitation last night, but we’ll give them a short shift outside for some fresh air before letting them back into their stalls again tonight.
I avoided hitting any deer on my commutes this week. Yesterday morning, I was lucky to not be a part of a 10-car chain reaction crash, –nor get caught in the significant backup of traffic behind it– when a vehicle hit a deer on I94, right at the bridge between Wisconsin and Minnesota. I had already passed that spot and was well on my way to work by then.
Everyday I don’t hit a deer in October and November is a successful day.
That’s my update on how everybody is doing today. We are thankful for all our good fortune.
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Relative Something 