On Tuesday morning I was up at 4AM and got the post up. Then I finished the laundry and cleaned the kitchen. I set up to feed the house plants and then to make persimmon pudding.
Tom arrived at 9AM to try to resurrect the printer but he didn’t succeed. It still prints black, but the colors are shot. So a new printer is on the horizon, I think, maybe after the New Year.
I’d gotten a shower and sat down for my helper friend to arrive. He was late so I got up at 9:45AM and started testing bubble lights and putting them on the tree. I worked until just after 11AM and had to rest a while. I also was watering house plants in the living room while my helper friend (who arrived at 10AM) did the ones in the rest of the house.
He finished that and headed out to do errands. I got up about 11:45AM and did some more bubble lights. I had finished the first set of 7 strings and had gotten 3 strings up on the second set when I had to go sit down about 12:30PM.
Bubble light inspector
I knew I had more little cups and covers but hadn’t been able to find them, for the persimmon pudding. So my helper and I started really hunting for them before he left for errands and he found them in the cabinet over the fridge. I also found my turkeys there and got them out.
I was resting in my chair trying to find a short video to watch until it was time to go to PT. About 1:20PM my right shoulder started to hurt, like rotator cuff pain. Then it spread to my neck and then down my right side over my ribs. Then it got hard to breathe.
I put arnica cream on the shoulder but it didn’t help. Next I took ibuprofen and that didn’t help. I went in to lie down on the couch and was dozing when the driver arrived. I was so out of it, I got up and went to PT.
When I got there, they whisked me into a room and found lots of heating pads. They tried to treat it with me lying down, but I started to have breathing problems. So I sat in a chair, my right side covered in heating pads.
After half an hour it started to get better and I went home. At home my son got out my heating pads and I sat in my chair with them until supper time.
The therapist said that the repetitive motion of putting on lights had probably set it off. It was muscle spasms down my whole right side. Who knew?? I’ve decorated trees for over 50 years and never had this happen before. It’s so much fun, getting older….NOT!
I was in bed at 8 with lots of drugs and fell right to sleep. I can’t go to the exercise class, and the PT exercises have been cut in half. And no tree decorating until everything is resolved. Sigh…
So Wednesday when I planned to be busy all day, is looking like not much. Oh, well…
Sorry about the muscle spasms, getting old and not being able to move like one did in their younger days, is really not fun.
Yeah, this "getting old is not for sissies" crap really stinks!
Take good care of you!
#hive #posh
What’s an arnica cream?
Arnica is one of the herbs I grow in the New Herb garden. But the cream is not one I made. Arnica is good for most things painful.
I never knew tree decoration could be this stressful
Sorry about the stress and how you felt
Nor did I! I’ve been doing trees just this way for decades and never had a problem. Getting old isn’t for sissies… Sigh
I'm glad that you are now feeling much better... And I can see how serious you are with the Christmas bubble lights. Well done.
This might be as a result of an excessive work, but good to know that you are perfectly fine now
Not yet, I’m not. It will be a few days before I’ve recovered.
Thank goodness it was just overworking the muscles and nothing more. Rest a bit, you're always on the go. ♥
I got no choice, hurts too much to move…
I just had a persimmon for the first time the other day! What a cool fruit, I imagine the pudding is fantastic too.
I'm sorry to hear you're having that kind of shoulder pain!! When it radiates like that it sure does make everything miserable :/. The tree looks great so far though! Wishing you a speedy recovery and maybe another helper to finish the task so you don't agitate the shoulder again 💚
That's strange all that problem just for a tree decoration, very strange... At least you are better now
The therapist said it was the repetitive motion, same action repeated too often.
Oh! The muscle spasm sounded quite worrisome. I hope the hot pads did help quite a bit. I think you ought to be using dumbbells to strengthen your muscles later on. I have been working with dumbbells to strengthen my arm muscles.
The bubble lights look so nice on the tree. The inspector looked a bit sleepy! He worked too hard.
Hopefully a good rest and deep sleep would help with the healing. You need to take things easy for a while.