The pain I described in my last post persisted throughout the day on Thursday and overnight. On Friday morning I messaged Karen (neuro physiotherapy) for advice. Not only did I still have a lot of pain, but the slightest thing was making me a bit breathless and I just felt completely wiped all the time. As usual, Karen called back very efficiently and checked through a few things with me, one of her concerns being that I might have – or be developing – a pulmonary embolism! 😮 She felt fairly confident that wasn’t the case having asked me several questions about type of pain and location, but advised me to watch for signs and get myself up ED if necessary. Karen also gave some advice on how to minimise the shoulder blade pain when I pick things up etc, something that was becoming more of an issue to the extent I almost dropped a mug of coffee a couple of times.
The pain did start to lessen during the day although the flare ups were more frequent and widespread. The wiped out feeling persisted though and is still there now. The next few days were largely spent trying to manage the pain, lack of energy, and increasing frequency of stabbing in the left shoulder blade.
Tuesday we a relatively busy day. I had a dental appointment first off to have a wisdom tooth refilled. Later in the morning I went for my testosterone injection. Evidently the nurse thinks she nicked a blood vessel with the needle. I sometimes get a small bubble of blood after as the needle is quite a large gauge for the gloopy substance. However, when she started wiping blood off the whole length of my right butt cheek, I thought it a bit odd. She put a dressing on, and as I turned round having pulled my shorts back up I found her wiping blood up off the floor! 😱 She advised me to check the dressing in about an hour, and if there was a lot of blood in it give the practice a call and she will sort it out. Thankfully the dressing was pretty clean when I removed it.
In the afternoon I had hydrotherapy. I explained to Kate what had happened last week and that I was still feeling tired etc, but wanted to get some leg exercises in. We stuck to the same routine as the previous session rather than adding anything new. I felt reasonably ok doing the exercises, but towards the 20 minute mark I could feel exhaustion taking over. I was due to have physio with Kate on Wednesday but as we were chatting as I gradually dragged my tired body out of the pool, we concluded trying to do anything more would be pointless, and in fact we should wait until after the device has been reprogrammed. I completely understand and agree with her reasoning, but at the same time I feel gutted I can’t start doing something else to aid recovery. I had already asked about whether I could start on the cross-trainer – holding the static arms rather than the moving ones. Kate said that might actually be worse than moving my arms as holding something static would cause my body to twist unnaturally as I walk. My hope was that I could walk on the cross-trainer easier than walking on the street etc as I don’t need to lift my feet up. Sadly though the cross-trainer is a definite no for now. 😒
I got myself a cold drink and snack on the way out of hydro and sat in the car with the A/C on again yo cool down before driving home. By the time I got home I was knackered. My legs were like lead jelly weights and I started sweating and getting short of breath. After a nap on the sofa, I took myself to bed, although didn’t sleep any more, but rested and read a bit.
Last night was a repeat of so many nights recently. Whichever way I lay, it feels like the lower thoracic area of my spine is being squashed. Once I get to sleep I seem to be getting 3-4 hours solid, but it’s agony when I first try to move. Wednesday morning it was so painful I couldn’t even face lifting myself up to get my meds off the shelf over the bed. I spent the day resting and pottering round the house. A colleague came for a couple of hours and we had a bit of a work catch up, but that was about the extent of pushing brain or body. Late afternoon I decided to load the dishwasher. It didn’t seem to exacerbate the pain, but it was another thing that knackered me so quickly. I went and sat down for a bit and then thought I’d better check my O2 sats and blood pressure. My sats were fine (98%) but my BP was around 146/97. I did it again later in the evening and it had come down a bit but was still 142/93. I need to go back to monitoring that again. 😏
So here I am again at 2.30am, fairly significant pain despite having a lidocaine patch on, and after a few days of not really troubling me, my foot has decided to join in the fun and refuses to be in contact with any surface without feeling like someone’s having a small fire in my heel. I’m sure sleep will come eventually… 🥱