It has been the summer of pain. It all started innocently with some physical therapy in June to get my long suffering back and hips back to somewhat normal....so I can proceed to do activities that will put me back in therapy. All was going great until a mid July morning brought me neck pain beyond all neck pain. A neck kink I thought from one of the thousand sleeping positions I go through each night and would go away in a day. A day turned into a week, then two weeks with the therapists pinching, prodding and doing everything in their power to rid the force pushing down my left arm with a particular neck movement. X-rays showed no spine issues (I'm not spineless!) and am going to a sports doctor on Friday for some more prodding to release that darn nerve. To add to the fun, I was recently diagnosed with moderate gum disease so with a numb arm, I had a periodontist do some aggressive gum cleaning (read: gum ripping) a few weeks ago. Mouth stitches afterwards with a repeat performance on the left side coming in three weeks. Cry me a river.
With all of this going on and my back issue making a comeback recently from some left arm overcompensation while getting out of bed, I had a mountain bike race this past weekend in Bellaire that I signed up for long before this perfect storm of pain made it's appearance. I would not be denied, made the race and took first in the old man riding class. I'm glad there was no drug testing afterwards as I think I had every over-the-counter pain reliever in me. They all didn't do crap as adrenaline alone made me go but it reminded me of the Saturday Night Live skit on the "All Drug Olympics." (link below)
AARP victor, out
Trail Head
