More back-talk: I do not have excruciating neck/ back/ shoulder pain today. That makes today one of maybe 10 nearly pain-free/ low pain days in the last...decade? I am
that this means the steroid injection into my spine I had 10ish days ago (
not even between the smashed-together vertebrae bc the surgeon was like, there's not even room enough there for my tiny, imagery-guided needle; I'm injecting below and aiming up) is finally working a bit and that PT will now be able to address some cascaded issues.
Since the injection it's been varying pain, sometimes slightly different, but tbh sometimes slightly worse, so I got a bit down about it. But this week I started making a point
all day long to correct how I hold my head and to stop scrunching my shoulders, lowered my monitors at my desk, etc. Thursday the PT was finally willing to start with some exercises for my shoulder and back to strengthen muscles weakened by nerve compression and to retrain muscles that have been trying to cope and compensate. Yesterday it all still hurt through neck/ back/ shoulder (and my traps were burning the whole time I was working in the office) but I did the exercises at home as directed. This morning - even after a late late late night and sleeping hard on the bad shoulder - I woke up and...felt nothing. I mean, no pain (and no numbness or tingling, which started this spring, and increased through the summer). Strange. Kind of moved around a bit, expecting it to kick in (mornings have been rough this past week especially), but nope. Or not much - as the day's gone on there is some, but maybe 20-50% of usual.
I really, really hope that this can buy me at least some more and some non-excruciating time before having to look at spinal surgery. Or pain meds, which I do not want. There's no reversing what's already happened, and it will progress, but if occasional injections and PT don't keep the nerve compression and pain at bay for long, I'd rather just get surgery, even if it means getting metal drilled into my vertebrae or burring out bone to make room for the nerves.
In any case, a half-day of relief feels really, really good. As does activating and using muscles that have been forgotten and weakened, allowing the ones that have been overcompensating to get some relief as well.
In the mental health world, there's often this concept of forgiving yourself for acting against your greater interests or coping poorly, because you didn't know any better. And true self-awareness and sorting yourself out means that now that you know better, you can do better. That's how I feel about my mess of muscular poor coping. My body has been trying for decades to compensate for something that was going wrong*, and certain muscles having been doing their best to pick up the slack or avoid pain in the best way they know how - straining and hurting themselves, or weakening, in the process. And I was - aside from constant pain, which I generally just power through - able to do anything I wanted to do, up until this year. Annoying it came to this, but now I know at least one root cause and am actively taking steps to address it.
* it wasn't until I experienced numbness, tingling, and some weakness in one arm/shoulder that anyone ordered an MRI, which told the story.
