Well, I awoke to some horrible news this morning: My grandmother is in the hospital and is not expected to live much longer. She’s lived a long time, and has been in a lot of pain recently, so on one level we are glad that she is at peace now…but it’s still very hard to let go.
She has a subdural hematoma and the pressure on her brain is apparently shutting her down. Her heart, lungs, and other organs are working fine, but she’s not conscious. The doctors are saying anywhere for a few days to a month in this state before she dies. She really doesn’t look like herself, it’s very hard.
Prayers for the whole family are appreciated.
Ok, so I went to my friendly local doctor and now I know what is causing my shoulder pain: sub-deltoid bursitis. I must say I’m quite relieved it was not rotator cuff related, as that seems like a more difficult/serious problem. As it is, I need to take some anti-inflammatory drugs and go through range-of-motion exercises. The worst part is I can’t hit the weights for a couple of weeks.
Since I’ve had the pain, I realized how much I enjoy going to the gym every day. Considering my hatred of jocks/meatheads I never figured I’d be one who looks forward to working out. In fact, a couple of weeks ago I was doing some relaxation imagery and couldn’t settle on a relaxing image until I thought of the weight room. Bizarre. Probably because I don’t have to focus on anything more than each rep and set. Plus, there’s just a great feeling when you push yourself physically. I highly recommend it!
Speaking of, time to go to the gym and stare at the weight room while I do cardio. Sigh.
Alright, so I’ve been trying to better myself — eat less and exercise more, the basics. A few months ago my left arm would “go to sleep” at night if I had it stretched above my head. I didn’t think it was anything serious, just all these new muscles crowding my veins or something 
. So then a few weeks ago I started having some pain in my left shoulder when working out, especially doing bench presses and shoulder presses. Smartly, I kept on working out, although I did start stretching before going to the gym. Well, now it’s developed into a dull pain whenever I lift my left arm up above my head even when I’m not working out. So of course I freaked out this weekend. As of now, I’ve read a lot about shoulder problems and figure it’s probably a shoulder impingement. This is a good thing, as it’s not a rotator cuff tear as I feared late Saturday night. I’ve been resting it and putting heat on it, and I think it’s better now.
I still haven’t decided if I’m going to go to the doctor or not. Well, I probably should. Even though I’m fairly sure I know what he’ll say, it’s better to be safe than to have a greater problem and not know it. In fact, I’ll call for an appointment as soon as I’m done with this blog entry. Then I’ll probably have to rest it, heat it, and stretch it for a few weeks, and then it’s back to the weight rack I go!
Well, I never thought that I would use a blog program, why not just write my own Content Management System (CMS) with PHP? Certainly I have the ability to do so…and I’ve been meaning to do this for a long time, what’s that they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions? Well, I haven’t got around to it, and after seeing a web designer I really respect using Wordpress, I figured I might as well give it a try. And sure enough, it seems easy and very flexible…two good things in my book.
Yes, I know…the site is as generic as can be as of this moment. It will not be this way for long. Since Wordpress takes care of all of the scripting and database management, maybe I’ll actually get around to tweaking the design a bit! Either way, I’m spewing forth my opinions on the world again, even if nobody reads it, it makes me feel special. Aww.
