When you do physical therapy, you should try to balance what you're doing on both sides of the body. That way you make sure one side doesn't get too out of balance with the other.

One of the exercises I'm doing for my pinched shoulder involves lying on my side and lifting a weight across my body. Oddly, it's pretty easy to do on the side that has the pinched nerve. It's not so easy on the side where I had rotator cuff surgery back in 2009. When I lift the weight across my body there's a moment where I can actively feel nothingness, where bone had been removed. Then, a moment later, I feel everything catch properly into place and it's easy to lift again. It's the freakiest feeling and I wish it wouldn't happen.

And yet, I will not stop doing the exercise. That's despite the fact I'm pretty sure that building up that muscle isn't going to make any difference in how the exercise feels to me.

talons / Rake your talons / Link

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Tags: pinched nerve, shoulder, surgery

At least, I think I do. The foot is still pins & needles numb, so I'm pretty sure that I'm correct. The codeine is doing more for me this time, so don't be surprised when I start talking about flying purple elephants.

In a case of something that's not a fiction of my codeine, Comics Alliance reports on why the DC blog closed their comments section. *sigh* It's true, as they said, we comics geeks can't have anything nice. Not that I consider the DC blog to be that interesting, but still. DC might have handled this vitriol better. Comics Alliance commenters are reporting that it got shut down due to "hate-filled personal attacks" and "horrible bigoted remarks".

I'd like to say that I wouldn't believe that of my fellow comics fans, but alas; I know them all too well.

I do believe it, am disgusted by it, and I hope this helps explain to people why I'm not the most friendly of people at SDCC or other comics conventions. It disgusts me to repeat how many times I've been creepily hit on, had my shirt looked down, touched, etc. I once snapped at a DC executive for an innocuous question, because right before he stopped to comment on my name tag or shirt (IIRC), I'd just had some douchebag looking down my shirt.

These types of comic geeks so desperately need to clean up, stop objectifying women, and get their priorities straight.

Tags: codeine, comics, dc comics, news, pain, san diego comicccon, surgery

Issue: I dislike the Spoons analogy.
Problem: Despite my dislike, it's still the easiest explanation I can make.

I don't like it for essentially 2 reasons:
1) For various reasons, I feel that I'm not "qualified" to use it. Which is absurd; I've got plenty of invisible chronic pain issues, even if I have (and will hopefully again) gone months or years without significant pain issues.

2) It's overly simplistic. Yes, I know that's the beauty of it. However, for me, there's two elements to my day to day issues: how much energy do I have & how high are my pain levels.

I can have significant pain levels, and plenty of energy. Conversely, I can have minimal pain levels and no energy. While they do partially synchronize, they don't always. I need an analogy that takes multiple vectors into account. I just don't know what that analogy is.

In other news, I think last week was my sweet spot in pain management; I'd been off my feet long enough that the left foot was barely aching, and the right foot was healed enough to not be hurting much. Unless I walked more than a half-mile, in which case I'd lose both my pain-free state & my energy level. Even so, it was pretty sweet.

Now... now the left foot is just hurting constantly. There's not much more I can do (without trying to get narcotic level drugs, which I'm not doing) to take the edge off the pain. And the surgery on the left foot isn't going to be until the 25th of March. I know BF & Corwin keep trying to remind me that it's only about another month, but that's not helping this time. I used that mantra over New Year's to make it through to the first surgery. It's not helping as much this time.

It's going to be quite fun for everyone when I go back to work full-time in about 2 weeks. I predict my crank level going up about 30 fold. If I like you, I give you my apologizes in advance for my crankiness.

Tags: hallux limitus, pain, surgery, work

I was changing water bottles in the kitchen when I had a discussion with a co-worker, who's had surgeries in the past.

Co: *gives me weird look as I lift the big bottle from the ground to the table*
Hk: "What? I can't do this because it's "heavy"?" *as I rip off the top and turn it over onto the water cooler*
Co: "I'm just surprised you're risking it with your shoulder."
Hk: "My shoulder's fully healed."
Co: "I just wouldn't risk hurting it again."
Hk: "My shoulder's not like your knees. It can fully heal."

And this, readers, is why people don't fully heal from injuries. Do your Physical Therapy, do your strengthening exercises, get your range of motion back, and then go ahead and use the previously injured muscle/bone.

If you always coddle it, you will NEVER have full use back. If you make sure it's healed and strengthened, and then continue to use it (while continuing to strengthen it) you will have full use back.

Seriously. Any time I've heard from someone who's not fully healed from an ankle injury, shoulder injury, broken bone, etc I've asked them did they do their PT & strengthening. Invariably the answer is no, and that explains why I have no problems recovering and they do.

Tags: psa, shoulder, surgery, work
Mood: awake