Today turned out just a bit differently than I imagined it would. Yesterday, I was back at work after a four day weekend. I even managed to get myself to the gym for the first time since the baby was born. I tried to take it easy, doing my usual 30 minutes on the elliptical machine, but at a lower speed and intensity than I used to do, and no exercise machines.
This morning, I woke up at 3:30am with pain in my back near my shoulder blade so intense, I couldn’t move at first.
After taking off work, I managed to get an appointment with my doctor’s office on very short notice (as in, “someone can see you if you come in right now“). This was followed by a short-notice appointment with a physical therapist an hour later. Fortunately, Rina and Eliana were both mostly free today, since I couldn’t drive myself, it being too hard to look left or right.
Long and short of it, I’ve got muscle spasms in a shoulder muscle. I didn’t think it was shoulder related, as I could move my arm about just fine, but if I attempted to turn my head in any direction, the spot near my shoulder blade hurt. It was a very pinpoint pain, but it radiated out pretty far. So after an hour+ long appointment of acupressure (I thought it was acupuncture, but my PT friend said that was highly unlikely; I’ll find out for certain at my next appointment on Friday), ultrasound to heat up the muscles, and electrical stimulation to promote healing, I was given a couple of exercises to do at home, and was told about 6-8 more sessions of PT should be needed. The number of twice-weekly sessions is… annoying, to say the least. Maybe I’ll heal faster.
Lessons hopefully learned, since no one knows what really caused this:
- Before exercising, stretch both bottom AND top, not just the bottom
- Ease more into exercising if it hasn’t been done for a while
- Try to improve posture, not just while sitting at work but while standing and sleeping (since I sometimes sleep in awkward angles, and I’ve noticed a similiar pain after doing so)
- Get back into doing Pilates to strengthen all the back muscles, because if one tiny spot of spasms hurts this much, I sure don’t want to know what real back pain feels like
