The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
This is more yelling into the void than anything useful, but I managed to combine bad luck and bull-headed foolishness to reap myself a lot of pain.
Long story short, due to an old football injury that may or may not have had a "hatchet job" of a repair that I foolishly didn't fix in my 20s while under my father's health insurance (and until very recently lacked the sort of health insurance/savings to fix it since) my left elbow in normal times suffers from what I believe to be an entrapped ulnar nerve, a limited range of motion, weakness in the arm and hand, etc. Ordinarily it doesn't hurt that much, just makes for a weak arm that isn't very useful such that I can't do pushups, accomplish much lifting weights, or use regular dental floss. It's annoying but harmless and easy to sweep under the rug and ignore most of the time, especially when we're probably talking about needing a fairly serious surgical repair that until recently would've put me out of work for at least six weeks (Now I have an office job and would just be a slower typist.).
However, every once in awhile (and these seem to get worse with age, currently in my mid 30s) my elbow will suffer from a sufficiently severe arthritis flareup as to be crippled, and today has been one of those days. At best, we're talking about somewhere between 0-10 degrees range of motion in my elbow, constant throbbing pain that I'd rate around a 3 or 4 out of 10, and an instant jolt of pain if I move or twist the joint wrong. I'm pretty sure the cause of pain here is the swelling pushing the entrapped ulnar nerve into something solid, like someone with a screwdriver poking in at one's funny bone.
Anyway, duty called and a dear friend of mine needed an emergency car repair, stat, a brake caliper and rotor replacement (existing caliper was hyperextended and leaking fluid and the rotor was trashed). It was too late to get it to a shop, the friend needed it for a work trip tomorrow, blah blah blah. I knew it was going to suck but didn't see much good in saying "sorry man, good luck!" and going home to sit and feel sorry for myself so I worked through the pain, got the job done (I strongly advised said friend to run by a shop and have them check the torque on the caliper brackets, but am otherwise confident in my work and am reasonably confident that the bolts are tight enough, just not as sure as I'd like to be from working in the dark with limited space.), and the brakes work now.
Right/nice thing to do, but holy fuck that was the wrong move in the elbow department. We're now firmly in "joint is paralyzed" territory and that constant pain is now a more consistent four. I needed help putting my jacket on as I left. This sucks, and unless things dramatically improve tomorrow I'm probably going to wind up spending a few hours and a couple hundred bucks at an urgent care getting loaded up with enough steroids to fix this (This was likely the outcome anyway.). Ah well, such is life, and I have money in an HSA to pay for this now! Take better care of yourself than I have.
Oh yeah, happy coincidence: When this happens my elbow freezes at such an angle that my left hand falls in the right place on a keyboard and it's only slightly painful to type.
Sorry to hear it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link