divinemadam

Well, I had my first physical therapy session today and it went well.  Apparently, most of my issues are, indeed, muscular in nature.  There is a tiny area at the base of the skull, where it connects with the neck, that I cannot pronounce, where a major artery and a major nerve runs from the neck to the head.  Apparently, when I get stressed, I begin to tense the muscles around that little tunnel.  Most people do, which is what causes tension headaches.  In my case, the muscles have been tense for so long and so tight for so long, that they don't relax on their own.  I have to learn stretch them out to relax them and I have to build up the muscles in the middle of my upper back to help take some of the tension off of those muscles in the first place.  I also have to work on my posture.  In case you didn't know, I have the second worst posture in the world.  My father has the worst posture in the world, so as least I got it honest.  Strengthening the muscles in my upper back will also help my posture according to the therapist.

Anyway, I did feel better after the session and he did massage the area to release the tension and restore normal blood flow.  I had a headache when I went in there and left without one.  He told me that it was not uncommon to feel exhausted while going through therapy because your body is learning something new.  I told him that I felt exhausted anyway because by the end of the day, I hurt so much, I couldn't do anything but fight pain.  He said that should get better over the next few weeks.  It was funny because he asked what I did for a living that caused me to have such enormous stress, and when I told him that I was a school counselor, he asked me if I worked in the jail.  I told him no.  He asked what kind of school I worked in because he couldn't believe that I worked a regular school and had this much stress.    He said that he rarely saw anyone with that much stress and tension, much less someone at my age.  I think it's hilarious that he assumed that I work with juvenile delinquents though.  You know that I am telling everyone in the building tomorrow.

Hopefully, in a few weeks, I will be feeling relatively normal, whatever that means.  Then I can actually read and comment on LJ again.  I am actually trying to do it, but it's hard when even reading, much less commenting, takes more energy than I have at the moment.  Please be patient.  It's not you.  It's me.

I have been absent for a month or so from LJ because of RL, so I am going to try to do some updates based on categories.  The first will be to one that seems to be most pertinent which is my health.  If you have read my LJ, you know that this year has not been a good year for me health-wise.  I have had every cold, flu, and respiratory issue that you can imagine outside of pneumonia and bronchitis.  I have also been dealing with more and more migraines.  I finally was put on Topamax for that, which had some interesting side effects for about six weeks, and then no more migraines since.  Yay!

Once the headaches were gone, I noticed that the aching in my neck that I always felt with my headaches was still there.  I went to the doctor about it.  She said that it was an inflamed muscle and gave me anti-inflammatories, told me to ice it once or twice a day and do stretches.  I have been doing that for a couple of weeks.  However, over the weekend, my neck has been aching 10 times worse then before, and my fingers started tingling.  I also started having a weird visual effect, not the aura that comes with migraines, but more of a shadowy trail when things move.  Last night, I could barely move and almost went to the ER because I was in so much pain.  However, I took enough medicine and lay on an ice pack that I was able to go to sleep.  When I woke up this morning, I couldn't move much more than last night and my neck was still in as much pain.  I went to the Emergency Room.  They did a CT scan, which came back clear, so that is good.  The down side is that we don't know what is causing this.  I went home on some serious percocet with a referral to a neurologist and a prescription for muscle relaxers.  I am supposed to take the muscle relaxers 4 times a day, and I have no idea how I am going to work like that.  I thought that I would forego taking them, but once I woke up after the percocet wore off this afternoon, there is no way that I can function with this pain still throbbing in my neck without the medicine.  I guess being woozy at work is better than being non-functional and in pain.  I can only hope that I can get into the neurologist quickly and figure out what is going on.  What are the odds of that?  With my luck, not good.