I am sorry readers that I have been so quiet for a while, but my health has interfered yet again. About two months ago my back went into spasm and I kept getting pains down my right arm that were like electric shocks. I was aware at the time that I was spending far to long on the computer trying to sort out my holiday in November, but more of that later in another blog.
The effect on things I could do was quite dramatic, I cannot explain how troubling the pains down my arm were, luckily if thats the word I had had a similar pain in the past and that prompt physio usually resolved it. So off to my two favourite physios Gail and Andrea for treatment, these were topped by Silvain another physion if and when the others were not available, despite their best efforts the pains down the arm did not abate for some considerable time, i am still getting twinges now in fac, it was possibly six weeks or more seeing one of them at least twice per week before there was a lot of change, but at least they managed to reduce the pain in my lower back. To help I was taking strong painkillers but only when pain was really bad because I knew the effect they would have on my quality of life and the limited quality of life I would have, also they did little to help with the pains down my arm. The other thing I was doing was having hot and cold compresses frequently through the day to try to reduce the inflamation.
This was all a wake up call and from discussion with physios I realised that I needed to do more exercises myself at home and also to work on my very poor posture as that was making things worse. It seems my right shoulder is coming forward due to this and my arthritis and needs a lot of effort from me to slow it all down. Also I now worry about what would happen when on holiday particularly when I go for my long holiday in November.
The other thing I realised was the need to cut down on computer use and to look at using Dragon voice recognition software more often to carry out tasks. This is quite ironic as I have been doing a fair bit of work with a number of charites etc to do with Cardbox a database facility, in fact for one of them I have now been appointed as Database manager, not quite sure yet what this involves. For some reason the effect of using the tablet does not seem at present to have as much effect on hand and arm, so doing this on it.
Therefore only today I have Sean from Sue Jensens company to do some training with the Dragon, coming to help go through better ways of carrying out tasks on the computer. I have only just realised, that the position that I sit in when watching tv and the angle is making my back and posture worse, so I have now ordered a bracket for the wall to raise it to a more sensible height, I wonder why they make these stands so low when as I have now found the middle of the screen should be at the same height as my eyes when sitting, no wonder my posture was worse, there is nothing with the tv to warn of this. More generally when out I am trying to improve my posture, but after a lifetime of it being so poor its hard to change and sit properly.
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