After writing about how much I disliked Christmas, I've been struck down. Clearly I've upset that useless (nonexistent) omnipotent paranoid twat that some people refer to, this figment of their imagination, as god. Obviously I've pissed him/her/it off. Well, screw you, you non-existent piece of shit! How dare you do this to me!
Of course it could just be a coincidence. And I could think of worse things to be inflicted with just before Christmas, or at any time. Like developing allergies to alcohol and computers and to cats. That would be my life well and truly fucked.
No, I'm just suffering
I woke up from a Sunday afternoon nap to find a pain in my right shoulder and when I moved my arm the pain extended itself there as well, into the upper half at least. I decided that if it was no better the following morning I'd visit the 24 hour walk-in health centre about a mile and a half away.
Got up the next morning, still in pain but with stuff to do before I could even think about going to the health centre. I'd loaded the van the previous afternoon pre-pain with donated cat food which was fortunate. So out early to Asda to buy the week's load of tins of Kit-e-Kat and to take some cat food from the donated pet food bin there and over to Carole's to drop it off. On the way home I called in at Sainsbury's where there donated pet food bin was overflowing with, mostly, cat food -hurrah! I'd put a couple of stickers on it over a week ago saying we were in need of cat food so it looked like it had worked.
When I got home, my shoulder felt as if it had eased off slightly so I decided not to go to the health centre. Needless to say the pain got worse during the course of the day so at 5.00pm I drove there in the van. The place was almost empty and I got seen by a nurse within half an hour. He made me raise my arms in various positions and checked the muscles before deciding I'd pulled a muscle in the shoulder, probably through heavy lifting.
Well I do heavy lifting quite a lot, loading up the van with unsaleable stuff to take from the shop to the tip or stuck stuff to another charity like Barnardos. There was also the weekly tip trip from Carole's with a van full of sacks of soiled cat bedding and used cat litter and other smelly stuff. And in the last couple of days I'd done three trips to empty a flat of items we could sell. So heavy lifting is nothing unusual.
Then I realised what had caused it.
Until recently the skips at the council were about waist height (plus six feet further down) making it easy to get stuff out of the van and drop it in with no great effort. Now, however, the council have installed new skips which are twice the height and necessitate climbing up several steps to get to the rim which is then still higher than the old ones. When this happened I asked Carole to put less items in the black sacks and, when light enough, had got into the habit of hurling them over the rim with my right arm, sometimes without even going up the steps, and did the same with shop tip trip stuff when light enough. This was not a good idea.
So:diagnosis pulled muscle. Treatment: paracetemol and rest.
And about 1.30am I woke up in agony. Even the slightest movement caused pain. I struggled through the night until around 4.30 when I got up, emptied smelly cat litter, let cats out, read a magazine, and at 5.00am took two paracetamol and went back to bed. The pills must have had some effect as I dozed until half seven when I again woke in agony. An hour later I was on the phone to the doctor's. I wasn't disagreeing with the diagnosis, I just wanted to be prescribed heavy duty painkillers. She told me to start taking ibuprofen every three hours alternating with paracetamol and trying heat treatment (a hot water bottle on my shoulder).
It's now just before 2.00pm, I've had one dose of both and I have a hot water bottle which I'm going to place against my shoulder when I lay down for a nap in a few minutes and just hope this pain goes away before Christmas.
Sooner would be good.
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