Tag Archives: sprain

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long white gloves and an oxygen tank

I am invited to a Sinatra party, formal dress.

Let’s see. I have a sprained left shin. I fell on Monday, walking around a piece of property trying to find out if it had two streams. It doesn’t. It has one, three feet deep and over 18 inches wide. Who cares? Well, if it’s over 18 inches wide, it’s a salmon stream and to build a house you have to be 150 feet away. Which means you can’t because it cuts diagonally right through the property. Darn. I did not fall in the stream. I fell into a nice hole by a tree and rolled my left ankle a little. My ankles are pretty strong from dancing. It seemed fine.

So the next day I hike the beach twice, with my daughter and then B, maybe 6 miles. I am tired of hiking boots and try the toe shoes instead. “You have toe SOCKS?” said my minimalist daughter. “Of course,” I said, “Otherwise they are uncomfortable.”

Ankle is fine.

Next day I end up moving furniture. Ankle is a little sore.

Next day I hike a couple miles of beach in the morning and then a friend from Portland and I do the spit. We get to within a mile of the lighthouse, which means we hike 5-6 miles out on sand. It is gorgeous. I am limping on both feet by the time we get back, but left shin is worse. It’s really dumb to hike 14 miles in shoes that you have only worn once in the last year. I elevate my ankle once in the car.

View from North Beach

The NEXT day B and I are on a jaunt. My ankle now makes it known that it is NOT HAPPY with me. We stop at the store for fud, as my son calls it, and I get an ace wrap and wrap it. Later we pay $1.00 at a Fast Food Joint for a cup of ice water and I ice it. At his park unit he mows and I limp along the river until I am in the sun. Later we hike Rialto Beach. I wore my hiking boots. My ankle is not appeased.

Now we are at yesterday. I have tickets to the Sweet Honey in the Rock on line concert. At noon. Junteenth. Ooops, no, at 3 pm. Ooops, no, on the west coast at 5 pm. Then I can’t make the stupid ticket work. I am really really frustrated. Well. I send them emails, try to get a new password, I have the ticket number. I keep getting a 503 server OVERWHELMED. Dang. I give up after an hour.

But I am invited to a Sinatra Solstice Juneteenth Bash, formal dress up. In my town that means wearing anything you can think of. I put on a gray dress, sleeveless but it has little gray flowers with silver gray pearls in the middle, all over the front. I have above the elbow white gloves. My ankle has a snug wrap and I put on dark gray hose and silver shoes with a 1.5 inch heel. I won’t dance, too hard on the ankle. I have acquired a set of gray pearlish beads which is so long that if I do not wrap it around twice it reaches to my knees. Mysteriously enough, it has a clasp. Why does it have a clasp? So some giant can put it around their neck? I complete the outfit with lipstick and my oxygen tank. The tanks are lighter than the concentrator, though bulkier. They are slightly bigger around than a tall oxygen tank but are light. I change the tank before I go. A full one lasts about 3-4 hours.

It is an outdoor party, there is tons of yummy food and there is wine and mead but no beer. I brought one beer along with my contribution, so I nurse my one beer… and dance. My ankle does not like this, but the music is so fun. Our host sings sets intermittently and then there is a DJ. The above the elbow white gloves are very fun to wear dancing and I have to try not to whack people when I spin with the awkward oxygen tank.

One gentleman thanks me for dancing. He says I am having so much fun that he’s having fun just watching. Cool. I LOVE to dance. One woman says something about wanting to pick one of the gray flowers off my dress, and I say dramatically, “No, I shall not be deflowered!” A line that one cannot use often… People have wonderful costumes and feathers and gloves and hats. It is fun just seeing what people are wearing. People were asked to come only if vaccinated and I am mostly distanced. I mostly dance alone, but have a couple of dances with guys. It’s a bit tricky to spin without whacking them with the tank. Tank girl, heh, heh.

At last I get home. I got to the party at 6 and it is not dark when I get home. Maybe 8 or 8:30? I lie down on the bed with an ice pack, propping my pissed off shin up on a pillow, just for a few minutes. Crash and wake up three or four hours later with the light still on. I turn out the lights, move the ice pack and go back to sleep.

Long white gloves and an oxygen tank. I am so grateful for the oxygen. I feel better than I have in the last seven years….

….and today I might just rest the ankle.

Here is one of my favorite Sweet Honey in the Rock songs:

Sweet Honey in the Rock “breaths”

Happy Father’s Day. My father died in 2013, emphysema from unfiltered Camel cigarettes. Damn cigarettes. I miss him.

Sweet Honey in the Rock: Let There Be Peace

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Does back pain mean a disc?

Does back pain mean a disc?

Does sciatica, pain down the sciatic nerve, all the way down the leg, mean a lumbar disc is out of position and you need back surgery?

Ninety nine times out of one hundred: No.

No? What? Really? Doesn’t back pain and sciatic pain mean a disc is pressing on the nerve?

Nope.

Sciatica means that the nerve is annoyed. It is sending pain signals. It can be irritated and inflamed anywhere along the entire path of the nerve. When the nerve is inflammed or there is surrounding inflamation, the nerve sends pain signals.

But… if it is not a disc, WHAT IS IT?

Muscles that are injured, inflamed, irritated, contracted or torn, that in turn put pressure on or inflame the nerve.

The sciatic nerve is made up of multiple nerve roots coming from the spinal cord: L3, L4, L5, S1, S2, S3. And then variants. The nerve roots bundle together and then dive through a group of muscles and go down the back of the leg: deep in the muscles. Why deep? To protect this very big, very important, bundle of nerves. Branches veer off and innervate muscles and bone and tendon and fascia, all the way down to the toes. There is not a spinal column in the leg, to protect this nerve.

It dives in between the superior gemellus and the piriformes muscle, deep in the buttock. Under the gluteus maximus and the gluteus minimus. Then it goes down the leg, under the semitendonosus muscle and the biceps femoris muuscle, the big hamstrings.

Now, let’s go back up to the low back. Why does it hurt? With or without sciatica? There are six layers of muscles in the back, all way smaller than those hamstrings. The top is the latissimus dorsi, down 5 more layers to the small longus and brevis rotares muscles, which connect each vertebral bone and allow subtle and complex movements of the spine.

What happens when a muscle is torn or injured? People look blank in clinic when I ask. I say, “Think of a piece of steak, what happens when you cut it?” They still look blank. “It BLEEDS, right?” When a muscle is torn or injured and bleeds, it and the surrounding muscles cramp up as much as they can, to try to prevent further bleeding and tearing. If it is an extremity, ace wrap, elevate and ice, as soon as possible, to slow the swelling and bleeding and pain. If it is the lower back muscles, ice as soon as possible and applying pressure won’t hurt. No heat for 48 hours since muscle bleeding and swelling and inflammation usually peak at 48 hours. After 48 hours apply heat, then gently stretch, then ice after stretching.

Think of the muscle fibers as torn. They take about 6 to 8 weeks to fully heal. You want to stretch them and rehabilitate them without tearing them in that 6-8 weeks. You want every muscle to be fully functional, to be the right length, to not heal shortened or scarred. Get those fibers working again…

….or….

But doctor, my back has been hurting for FIVE YEARS!

Then it will take longer than 6 to 8 weeks to rehabilitate, retrain the muscles, gently break down the scar tissue, get it all functioning. Your muscles are doing their best. They told you they were hurt and you need to listen to them.

Covering it up with ibuprofen or alcohol or any number of substances or trying to ignore what your muscles are trying to tell you is a bit counter productive, don’t you think? Pain is information. An advil can help with the pain, but it does NOT fix the problem. “Drug me so that I can go on ignoring it.”…. uh, no. That is not ethical and it also doesn’t work.

And just think, if those back muscles continue tighter and tighter… they are constricting and pulling on the spinal bones.  They pull on those bones and then a disc might be thinned or crushed and might protrude and then press on a nerve. And then for surgery, what do they do to get to the disc? Cut through the six layers of muscle….