Entry tags:
Twists and turns and pressings
I've been having trouble, recently, with what I internet-diagnosed myself as a pinched nerve. I would cough or sneeze violently and feel a tingling in my hands and, occasionally, feet, but the sensation would pass quickly and I didn't think much of it. When I got my recent bad cold, however, I was having near-constant coughing fits thanks to my skull full of ick, and I noticed that the sensation wasn't leaving. In the past few days, the right side of my body has felt...not numb, exactly, but pins-and-needlesish and distinctly odd. It's like I have a piano wire strung from my right shoulder to my right heel, and every once in a while a hammer would strike the wire and jangle the whole thing. I figured that I'd done something to myself by having a bad setup for my computer and keyboard, or by the fact that I'm strongly right-handed and right-sided (and thus bad about switching my bag from my right shoulder to my left and things like that), and hied myself to the doctor this morning.
The whole thing turned into an upsetting deal, which I didn't really expect. I was asked about exercise and lifting (and told, but not in a particularly judgemental way thank goodness, that I needed to get about 30 minutes a day of good exercise) and told not to start yoga like I had wanted to until they ruled out a bad disc or something. She noticed a nice tight bunch of muscle in the vicinity of my right shoulder, which is something that plagues me routinely despite massages from Bemo and attempts to stretch.
I also had blood drawn to check my blood sugar and whether or not my thyroid is inflamed (the first probably because there is a family history of diabetes which can do things to your extremities, and the latter, well...I have no idea). I'm not bad at getting blood drawn, but it was a little weird when the nurse snapped the vial on and we both stared at it for about three minutes as it refused to fill with blood. "Where are you hiding it?" she asked. A smaller-gauge needle proved to do the trick nicely. I would have been irked if she had had to hunt all over for a usable vein.
I've also been sent off for a "bilateral upper and lower extremity nerve conduction study," which is apparently a set of sticky pads on my arm that read whether or not the nerve is firing correctly.
The end result of all this is that I walked out to the car and cried on Bemo. (I can't believe it's such a big deal, is it really a big deal?, we can't afford to have me put through a bunch of pricy tests and then they'll probably tell us I need a massage and a better office chair, I probably have diabetes, maybe it's MS, being sick is a moral failing, I shouldn't have gone to the doctor because all I've done is Start Something, yadda yadda yadda.)
I'm feeling better now, at least emotionally - my hand has not miraculously stopped feeling strange even though I'm testing out a new keyboard setup at work. I'm hoping that all these tests come back showing nothing too bad and that this can all be solved with something like a wrist brace and maybe an ergonomic pillow for my chair.
The whole thing turned into an upsetting deal, which I didn't really expect. I was asked about exercise and lifting (and told, but not in a particularly judgemental way thank goodness, that I needed to get about 30 minutes a day of good exercise) and told not to start yoga like I had wanted to until they ruled out a bad disc or something. She noticed a nice tight bunch of muscle in the vicinity of my right shoulder, which is something that plagues me routinely despite massages from Bemo and attempts to stretch.
I also had blood drawn to check my blood sugar and whether or not my thyroid is inflamed (the first probably because there is a family history of diabetes which can do things to your extremities, and the latter, well...I have no idea). I'm not bad at getting blood drawn, but it was a little weird when the nurse snapped the vial on and we both stared at it for about three minutes as it refused to fill with blood. "Where are you hiding it?" she asked. A smaller-gauge needle proved to do the trick nicely. I would have been irked if she had had to hunt all over for a usable vein.
I've also been sent off for a "bilateral upper and lower extremity nerve conduction study," which is apparently a set of sticky pads on my arm that read whether or not the nerve is firing correctly.
The end result of all this is that I walked out to the car and cried on Bemo. (I can't believe it's such a big deal, is it really a big deal?, we can't afford to have me put through a bunch of pricy tests and then they'll probably tell us I need a massage and a better office chair, I probably have diabetes, maybe it's MS, being sick is a moral failing, I shouldn't have gone to the doctor because all I've done is Start Something, yadda yadda yadda.)
I'm feeling better now, at least emotionally - my hand has not miraculously stopped feeling strange even though I'm testing out a new keyboard setup at work. I'm hoping that all these tests come back showing nothing too bad and that this can all be solved with something like a wrist brace and maybe an ergonomic pillow for my chair.