A pain in the neck

You don’t realise how much you use something when all of a sudden it hurts to use it. My right hand, for example, is very important when it comes to work and play. So when it felt like it was going to drop off a couple of weeks ago, trying not to use it caused all sorts of problems.

Texting left handed I can just about manage, but wiping my bum? Ha, only joking. Basically, to cut a long story short, my hand has been playing up for the best part of six months – burning knuckles, shooting pains, numbness and general seizing up. Not ideal.t

So after two trips to the doctors – both of whom looked a bit baffled by my complain – I got referred to the Blackberry Clinic for a specialist’s opinion. I’m no stranger to this clinic having hopped in with a sprained ankle last year and a rickety shoulder earlier this year. And they say playing sport is good for you? Hmmmm.

Anyhoo, I have a diagnosis. Apparently I have Work Related Upper Limb Disorder Type II, which kinda makes me sound like a bit of a freak. Perhaps I am. I had my suspicion that I had RSI, but the specialist informs me this is not the case, and while similar, my said disorder is very much treatable.

What’s really interesting is that my hand isn’t the problem. My hand’s fine apparently. It’s my neck and shoulders that are the problem. I can’t remember exactly what was said but basically I have really weak neck muscles, curvy shoulders (not quite the hunchback of Notre Dame, but not far off) and my neck doesn’t sit quite right. I’m all out of kilter.

So, what’s the cure? No, not to chop my head off – that would put pay to my modelling career (as if) – but a series of visits to an osteopath and a physio. This could get expensive.

I had my first session with the osteopath earlier in the week and she proceeded to roll me into some very odd positions and practically lie on me in order to click my back. It didn’t hurt but I can’t say it was the nicest feeling. And it’s very hard to follow orders to relax when you’re topless on a bed with an osteo lying across you. But she’s given me some neck stretching exercises to do and I have to ice my neck three times a day with a bag of frozen peas!

Still, it’ll all be worth it if it stops the pain in my hand, which is referred pain due to my duff neck and shoulders. I also need to reassess the way I work, particularly at home where I slouch or even lie on the sofa with the Macbook Pro sliding off my lap. Not good.

Playing volleyball doesn’t aid my freaky diagnosis either as the position I play requires me to look up all the time, squeezing the nerves in my neck and agrivating the problem. Not playing isn’t an option though – and to be fair, that hasn’t been suggested. I’m an athlete, without sport I’m… well…, not an athlete.

So folks, I may be a freak but I can be cured. Will keep y’all posted. If you care, that is ;0)

Not very handy

I’ve developed a problem which is a real pain in the…well, in the hand actually. It’s been coming on since Christmas and I’ve had inklings of it before, back in the day when I was knocking out page layout after page layout.

Now it’s back, with avengeance. What am I talking about? Well, I don’t know what it is but I’m pretty sure it’s RSI (repetitive strain injury). I always thought this was one of those made-up things people conjure up to get time off work, akin to stress and depression etc, but I am in quite some discomfort I have to confess.

My hand – not my wrist as the doctor misinterpreted – hurts all the time, like a dull ache. I also have bouts of pins and needles, numbness and it just feels weak. Even totally relaxed it just feels odd. Shooting pain up my fingers and a burning sensation in my knuckles are other less than delightful symptoms.

Now, I use my hand a lot so resting it is tricky. I’m on a computer all day and often much of the evening, I text an awful lot and I play netball and volleyball up to four times a week – two sports where the hands are quite useful, let me tell you. So to stop using my hand poses a bit of a problem.

The doctor hasn’t suggested not using it so much – just a blood test to check for infection, arthritis etc. She tapped my hand in various places, mostly my wrist which isn’t where the discomfort is – and got me to push and pull her fingers to check resistance. But what was she comparing it against? I didn’t have to push and pull with my left hand and that is now much stronger than my right, despite being right handed. Bit rubbish really.

I’m on anti-inflammatories for now and will get re-checked after the blood test results which I guarantee will come up negatory.

I am worried ‘cos it’s getting worse but the options available to make it better – i.e. not using it – aren’t really appealing. We’ll see how it goes. My friend reccommended using freeze gel to numb the pain but all it seems to do is make my hands smell nice.

Race for Life

Myself and my good mate are doing the Race for Life – a 5km run -  in May for the following reasons:

• We enjoy torturing ourselves with painful challenges
• It’s a good chance to irritate friends and family by nagging them for sponsorship
• It gives us something to train for (or at least it should do, although I see a last minute panic coming on)
• It’s for a very good cause and we all know someone touched by cancer

You can walk the Race for Life but this is NOT an option for us. No pain, no gain.

If you want to sponsor us, please do so here

The story of the fat finger

I lost a lot of sleep last night so feel a tad bleary-eyed today. My insomnia wasn’t due to having lots on my mind, not being able to get comfy or even the half hour nap I had after work. I couldn’t sleep ‘cos I was in pain.

The middle finger on my right hand is incredibly swollen and incredibly painful; and I realise how ridiculous this sounds as I write about it. I’m not sure what’s going on with it, but it’s fat and red and tender and last night I wanted to chop it off. The pain was constant and when it started throbbing in time with my heart beat I thought I was gonna be sick. How can a swollen finger be so agonising?

I’m a total wuss when it somes to pain. I’m well aware of that. My ankle incident back in January is proof of the pudding. And it reminds me of the time, some years ago, when a ball bounced off my middle finger during volleyball training (it had been hit by a man, I add, and very hard too) and it pushed my knuckle to some place it didn’t want to go.

I muddled on but by the time I got home I pretty much had a club hand, so kept it raised and loaded it with ice. My big concern was – I was working as a newspaper editor at the time – that it was deadline day the next day and my right had would be instrumental in putting the paper to bed on time. I had 13 pages to sub and layout (twice as many as on a normal day) and I couldn’t do it left handed). So I was super stressed.

I went to bed and awoke at 3am in immense pain. My hand was in agony and I could barely move my fingers. So, I did what any girl does when she’s upset, worried or in a spot of bother; I called my mum. At 3am.

I was crying down the phone when she answered half asleep and, in hindsight, realised I’d probably put her in, at best, a mild state of panic. When she found out I’d just hurt my hand at volleyball training she was pretty relieved and remembered what a daft bat I can be when it comes to pain.

She was very good actually, and just told me to get some sleep, call a taxi in the morning and go to casualty before work. Bless her. I didn’t sleep but got out of bed at the crack of dawn and got myself ready for a pre-work trip to A&E. Now, washing your hair when you can’t use your right hand is tricky, and so is wiping your bum.

I ignored mum’s taxi advice and drove one-handed to the hospital. I am very stubborn. I felt a bit of a fraud and half wanted my hand to be broken, just to justify the trip to casualty and the 3am phone call. But no, x-rays revealed no breaks, and the nurse taped my fingers together for support and advised me that it was a bad sprain and I should rest them. A bad sprain? Was that it? Rubbish.

So, deadline day went okay in the end and my readers got their paper on time. It was actually pretty easy to use a mouse with my fingers taped up, although it did take a good week for my knuckle to return to normal size.

I’m not really sure what the point of this blog entry is, except to say I am totally rubbish when it comes to any kind of pain.. and why the hell do I have a fat finger? I’m tempted to stick a needle in it and see if it pops. But I know that would hurt. Gasp.

Boot camp

Last night I went to boot camp, an kind of exercise class/circuit training set-up, with some of the girls from work. Oh. My. God.

This class is for men and women, although it was mostly the latter, and the fitness instructor was a tad scary. Super fit, super glam and the sort of woman who made tracksuits look good. She was actually really nice although she did make CK do five press-ups for yawning.

I won’t bore you with the ins and outs of what happened during this hour-long fitness sesh but needless to say, by the end of it, I was drowning in my own sweat and had pretty much lost the feeling in my arms and legs. Which made driving home a tad uncomfortable!

Some of the girls, amazingly, didn’t seem to break a sweat and walked out looking just as glam as they walked in. This is not normal. Maybe CK and I hammered it more than others a) because we had the men next to us and our competitive nature made us want to keep up and b) because we were newcomers and wanted to make a good impression to scary fitness lady.

Defo going back next week. No pain, no gain!

Am I playing the wrong sport?

At volleyball training last week I did something I don’t usually do. I dived. However, this painful act of movement wasn’t in the usual context of playing volleyball.

Our coach decided to make us play a game, for fun. Two teams of girlies stood in a line at opposite sides of one end of the court, and as he kicked a volleyball down the court you had to race each other to see who would get to it first.

Now then. Although diving in volleyball is something I don’t do because it’s very painful, I am very competitive when it comes to one-to-one stuff. When two people are involved, second means last and I don’t do last.

So, firstly I surprised people with my speed (I used to be a sprinter but tend not to utilise this skill in volleyball) and secondly, I shocked people with my diving skills. The best way to stop someone else getting the ball, particularly if they’re behind you, is to dive on it.

Whereas in volleyball you dive forwards (smacking all vital body parts on the floor) in this game I dived sideways to protect the ball, therefore landing on the padded areas of my thighs and butt cheeks. It still bloody hurt but not so much as to stop doing it. We did it about 10 times and I won every round. In the last round I was rewarded with cheers of “Go Robyn, go Robyn, go Robyn” as I lunged to to the floor for victory, emerging as the hero of “the silly ball game”.

Although I walked away with a grazed elbow, a bruised thigh and someone’s footprint embedded on my shin, I did feel pretty good about being undefeated. Maybe volleyball isn’t the right sport for me? Perhaps I should take up rugby?

A sign of age?

Okay, so I am still the right side of 30 but I am seriously noticing the difference between 18 and 28. I played a lot of sport when I was 18 and I play a lot of sport now, the difference being I could walk off a netball court 10 years ago feeling a bit hot and sweaty but generally fine. Now I walk off court looking like a sweat-soaked beetroot, pain in at least two joints and usually needing a walking stick to get out of bed the following morning.

Yesterday, for example, I played in an all day charity volleyball tournament. By the end of the day I was shattered – not helped by the huge amount of cake I consumed (cake stall funds were all for charity and I had to do my bit) – and in a bit of pain. My dodgy ankle was swollen and aching when I removed my trainers, I somehow strained the back of my knee a few weeks back and volleyball only served to aggravate it, and my wrist and my back hurt too.

And last week, when I played netball against a team of 14-year-olds, I seriously felt old. They were young, agile, fit, as tall as me, and ran rings around us. Yes, we were more experienced, but that doesn’t mean much when your opponents are three stone lighter and don’t yet know the meaning of calorie counting and high BMIs.

Even when I was off court (we rotated players every now and then) sweat was still pouring off me and I could feel my red face physically warming up the room. This never used to happen! I must be getting older.

I’m now sat at my desk at work and my shoulders ache. Moving from my chair is a struggle as I seize up if I sit still for too long. Maybe I’m just not as fit as I should be, or maybe the fact I’m heavier than I used to be means I’m putting more strain on my body and this is its way of complaining?

But I take comfort in the fact I’m not alone. Yesterday’s tournament was filled with people limping off court, clutching their backs, wearing ankle and knee supports and generally looking pooped. So I’m in good company!