Knee MRI next week!

In other news, I am getting myself a KNEE MRI next week! Yahoo! Just what I always wanted!!!

This is interesting because I was expecting him to MRI my shoulder. However since I've only had a few weeks therapy he thinks it's too soon to do anything for it, plus the pain seems to be muscular. So I will continue the taping, the stretching and the lidocaine ultrasounds for awhile longer.

The knee is still feeling pretty icky; if I take my brace off I start getting queasy and it feels like things are squishing around in my knee. I can feel weird little twinges and tight spots, and then the horrible pain sets in. So I am continuing the knee brace until we know more what's going on!

Darvocet/propoxyphene/Darvon

Well this is really strange. Turns out the pain med. my doc. has been giving me for the past several years could kill me.

FDA Delays May Have Cost Lives

No More Darvon for U.S. Markets

Since I've had heart rhythm issues in the past, I decided to look up what KIND of heart rhythm this could cause. I found this:

http://www.cardiovascularbusiness.com/index.php?option=com_articles&view=article&id=25271&division=cvb"the drug caused significant changes to the electrical activity of the heart—prolonged PR interval, widened QRS complex and prolonged QT interval."

I looked this up also, and basically what it is saying is it slows the entire heartbeat down. If my heart beats too fast normally, would this necessarily be a bad thing? Hmmm. I have about half a bottle left and I only take one pill a week tops, only on my "bad days." I'm not sure how much I should worry about this. Also, should I be worrying about the other meds. I am on?? :-S

And more tape. . .

My shoulder hurt so bad yesterday without the tape. It felt like someone was stabbing me in the back of the shoulder :( As soon as I got home, I put an ice pack on and it calmed down considerably. However it was so bad I could barely use my left arm, even with the ice. Today I woke up and was able to use it again, but I still don't want to pick up heavy things or open doors. If I see a door with a handicapped automatic door opener button, I use that because opening heavy outside doors is just too difficult! PULLING open is the hardest. To PUSH I can use my bodyweight to help push with my "good arm." Pulling is agony. I might have to start using the front door at work because the back door for employees is one of those heavy metal ones! I'll feel sort of strange, but won't be the first :)

Today I got another PT lady and she taped me a slightly different way. Since my shoulder "rebounded" from the first tape, she made it a bit less tight this time. She had me do a few exercises which she explained were to help my shoulderblade stop "winging". I know all about winging scapula! If only I could actually take flight, I wouldn't mind it so much :)

Kinesio Tape

Last week at PT I got my first experience with Kinesio Tape!

http://www.kinesiotaping.com/

I would like to shake the hand of this guy, Mr. Kenzo Kase, who invented this stuff. I had a virtually pain-free weekend!! Of course as soon as it started itching and I took it off, the shoulder started spasming again with a vengeance :(

The PT lady taped the back of my shoulder, from the top to the bottom of my shoulder blade. It felt like the tape was lifting my shoulder up and back into its proper position! My shoulder is so hypermobile and wobbly, it continues to want to round/hunch forward which causes the muscles in front to shorten and muscles in back to get stretched out. They put it on Thu. and told me to take it off Sat. or Sun. By Sunday it was starting to itch, so hubby helped me pull it off. It is EXTREMELY sticky and somewhat difficult to remove and left some pink marks on my EDS skin, but it was well worth it. Tue. they might tape it up again - oh I hope so!

PT for left shoulder

Well, I guess my left shoulder was feeling jealous about all the attention my right shoulder got last year. So it has decided to sublux and spasm more! I finally made it to PT, and the lady poked around on my shoulder and measured my ROM. Seems my ROM is great - it's just that the shoulder is too "loose" so actually - too much ROM!

She also said the shoulder contained a lot of "trigger points" and perhaps something was going on with the bursa sac. She did some ultrasound on it which felt very nice and relaxing. Then, she told me I should NOT be lifting or pushing or putting all my bodyweight on that arm. So that explains why I had to drop out of yoga!

I'm supposed to start regular PT as soon as they can fit me into the schedule. The GOOD NEWS is they don't want me doing any stretching exercises until the shoulder calms down. That's the crappy part of PT but I guess this time they are taking a different approach.

Airplane rides - more success this time

I took another trip last week - to sunny L.A.! Amazingly, I did much better than the last trip I took. First of all I knew more what I was doing at the airport. Secondly, I brought my fuzzy warm neck pillow and kept that on during the entire flights. Thirdly, I got these special earplugs called "EarPlanes."

http://www.amazon.com/EarPlanes-Pressure-Regulating-Earplugs-Pairs/dp/B001HTWL8C/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1289414301&sr=8-3

These things rock! I highly recommend. You put them in before takeoff and also an hour before descent. For the short connector flights I just left them in the whole time. I could feel pressure on my eardrums but it seemed the EarPlanes were softening the changes. I did NOT experience the extreme head pain I had last time! On the last trip, I had severe head pain for DAYS! I'm not sure if it was the neck pillow or the EarPlanes, but between the 2, my pain was minimal. I only had one migraine after getting there and then - nada! I was impressed.