Trying to get back on track with a bit of exercise. I’m a little afraid to try running again, as I don’t want to mess up my shoulder. Not entirely sure what to do! But I've started with sit-ups this morning.
Also, have started tracking my nutrition again. Did pretty good here I think—all hail smoked mussels, a great source of iron!
Well, it hasn’t been much of a fall. After the thing with my shoulder I gave up running, and I haven’t really replaced it with anything. Need to fix that. I am still riding my bicycle daily though, that is something.
anyway this morning i thought of something i can/should do—brighten up my teeth! i bought these aquafresh white trays back when I got my braces off, and used one before I realized you weren’t supposed to use them for two weeks before or after getting any dental work done. Whoops. And it’s a good thing too that I didn’t use them all back then, because after the cleaning I got done this fall—it was a doozy—I think all the whitened bits would have been scraped off and I’d have been left with teeth looking a little patchy.
(I must say, I’ve started using the soft piks instead of trying to floss around my retainer wire, and it’s made a world of difference. That is, I do it. I was barely flossing at all before, because of the hassle and pain of the threader. Now I soft pik & floss my uppers all the time.)
I’ve been thinking of my teeth lately too, because that pesky 12 looked like it was popping out again. sigh. My ortho told me I don’t need to wear my upper essix all the time anymore, “Just make sure you can still get it in and you’re fine.” Well, I think I need to wear it at least once a week, lest that 12 get a mind of its own.
Anyway. Every night I see the box of white trays as I stumble off to bed, and think, “But I want to fall asleep now, I don’t want to have to get up in 45 minutes to go spit out the tray and rinse out my mouth.”
So this morning I thought, why not now? I usually get up an hour before anyone else, and I’ve been experimenting with leaving off drinking coffee till I get to work, so why not do it in the morning?
So here I sit, mouth full of goop, feeling a bit odd, but hopefully making some tiny steps towards self-improvement.
As if it wasn’t already obvious, I am taking a break. My neck was bothering me all weekend, I can’t turn my head to the left fully, my shoulder is up, and I started getting all those weird random pains again that I used to get—a sudden sharp pain like being stabbed, very local, and in odd spots—the back of my right hand, the midpoint of my shin. Anyway, no more running, no more sit-ups, no nothing new until the problems have been dealt with. I still have my cycling though, so it’s not like I’m getting no exercise at all.
Also, note to self: start taking a vitamin D supplement again. The days are getting shorter. Wonder if that could be part of my problem?
In other news, here’s what I ate yesterday, pretty good I think!
This morning I lay in bed for a minute before starting my sit-ups. And I thought, maybe sit-ups are the problem not running? It makes more sense for sit-ups to hurt my neck than running, but I’d done sets of sit-ups semi-regularly through the summer, with no problem. Maybe it’s some combination of the two? Anyway this morning sit-ups really hurt my neck and shoulder! So I only did six. I think I’ll look up safer situps, or maybe find some other indoor exercise to do that doesn’t take a lot of space.
I think I’m not going to follow the c25k path. I think I’m just going to run at my own pace.
The neck pain last week really freaked me out. Actually what freaked me out was not so much the pain as the loss of mobility. I couldn’t turn my head enough to touch my chin to my left shoulder. I need to be able to do that to ride my bike. So I’m going to let my body be my guide, and go at the pace that doesn’t cause me damage.
I skipped running on Friday because of my neck, and Monday because I overslept and we had a teenager staying in the house and it was a holiday. but today, I ran. That’ll do.
Couldn’t sleep at all last night because my neck was bothering me. My left hand is sore and achy this morning too, bah. So I opted not to drag myself out of bed today, and instead spent some time doing stretches. Thinking I should probably go see angus again to see if he can fix me, or more importantly help me stop making things worse!
Just to be whiny for a moment, it seems unfair that when I finally get myself on the road to getting back in shape, I start hurting again. Wah wah, poor me.
Well, I’ve had a pretty good day today—ate what I was supposed to eat, drank lots of water, got exercise—but this pain in my neck has been bothering me. I first noticed it a couple of days ago, and today it’s bothering me more.
Now, about a year ago I saw a pain specialist who theorized that I have thoracic outlet syndrome. he ordered a million billion tests (blood tests, ultrasounds, you name it) and gave me some exercises to do, and some diet/supplement recommendations which made a world of difference. So much difference, in fact, that I didn’t follow up and find out what the ultrasounds revealed.
Annyhoo, today I googled thoracic outlet syndrome again, to see if the running could somehow be causing something to go wrong, and I found this page with some exercises which might be useful. It also has a diagnostic exercise your doc might try on you, the EAST test or “hands-up” test. Basically, you hold your hands up in the air, “elbows slightly behind your head,” for 3 minutes, opening and closing your hands. So I thought I’d try it. It’s certainly tiring - anyone holding their arm up in the air is going to find it tiring, but not so bad, I thought. “Maybe it’s not TOS after all,” sez I.
Then—whoa nelly! I start to realize I can't open my left hand all the way. I have a shooting pain in the base of my thumb. It still hurts. And it’s so tired/heavy it just dangles. My right arm is fine.
So, I’m going to get back to doing the stretches and exercises which helped in the past, which I (foolishly) got lazy about doing. And add some new stretches to my arsenal. and be more careful about posture. And never forget my fish oil. And I might just go to bed with a heating pad right now.
ETA: I just found an article on PubMed describing a variant of Charcot Marie Tooth which “may be misdiagnosed as thoracid outlet syndrome.” Ack! My mother had CMT, and it’s hereditary. Time to pack up the google and go to bed!
