Getting old HURTS!

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I’ve had “splatter-my-brains-all-over-the-ceiling” migraines ever since I was a kid. And my knees have always been defective.

But why is it as the candles multiply on my birthday cake, more parts of my body wind up screaming in pain?

I’ve always had neck pain in conjunction with my migraines. But then the neck business elbow-bumped the headaches to the ditch, and took over. Now mind you, I’ve complained of neck pain for more than twenty years, and nothing much happened. It wasn’t until I had a torn rotator cuff repaired that someone (the shoulder surgeon) listened to me complaining of neck pain. He sent me for a neck MRI, then referred me to a neck pain specialist.

The neck doctor looked at the MRI and said, “Of course your neck hurts! You’ve got a pinched nerve!”

:smack:

The neck doctor is a pain management specialist. My primary care provider had an attitude of disdain about that specialty.

So what? My neck pain was making me so miserable, I spent a great deal of the day just sitting, not moving, to avoid pain. Pain management gave me a good portion of my life back.

A couple of months ago, my neck doctor referred me to a neurosurgeon to see if I was a candidate for spinal fusion. Answer: not yet. But the neurosurgeon gave me a prescription for Celebrex.

I started taking it, and I had no belly pain, no vomiting blood, so I figured I’d keep taking it and see how it worked on the pain.

I was able to do more. And with six people in the jouse under the shelter-in-place situation, there’s a helluva lot more to do! Managing the meals to accommodate Mr VOW’s no-salt restrictions is practically a full-time job!

As time went on, I could tell when the Celebrex wore off. Then all work would stop, and you’d find Gramma sitting in her recliner with her neck pillow.

About a week ago, there was a slight change. When the Celebrex wore off, my right collarbone hurt. The next day or two, the pain moved from my collarbone to the inside of my shoulder joint. Kind of like a red hot railroad spike was being pounded into the joint.

As the days passed, I added upper arm pain.

I saw the neck doctor yesterday. I said I needed to know if the coolarbone-shoulder-arm pain was caused by my neck, or was it something completely different and I needed to go to my Primary Care doctor?

It’s my neck.

I’ve got arthritis and a handful of other things wrong with my neck. It’s a degenerative disease.

Why does old age have to HURT?
~old VOW

2

Growing old is not for sissies.

3

Oh, **~VOW **, my evil twin. I feel for you.
Is there no PT or better drugs?
I draw the line on pain when it hurts so bad I can’t ‘rest.’ I don’t sleep well, but I can grab some quality ‘rest’.

Gentle {{{hugs}}}, feel better soon. We need our resident Smartass around here. :slight_smile:

4

PT has helped but I discontinued it first because of Mr VOW’s heart attack and subsequent rehab, and of course, shelter-in-place.

I would be apprehensive to try PT after this new development!

I’m on Percocet. I now have a Rx for Celebrex, twice a day, and a Rx for Lidocaine patches.

The Celebrex may be messing with my blood pressure. I’ve got to monitor that now, daily.

I think I’ll buy stock in heating pads.
~old VOW

5

Getting old isn’t for the weak, that’s for sure.

ETA:

That’s what I’m talkin’ 'bout.

6

Does that mean us sissy folks don’t have to get old? whistling angel halo smiley

7

Think about the alternatives.

Remember that kid you vaguely knew in high school who got killed in a car accident? They said the car was going too fast and the driver was drunk.

Would you rather be that kid who avoided all the miseries of old age than you?

PS. It sounds like you haven’t been married very long. If you had you could have taught Mr. Wow how to cook!

8

Tee hee!

Mr.WOW can sure cook!

9

Mr VOW knows how to cook. He isn’t familiar with how the salt restriction stuff works.

Mr VOW has seizure disorder which developed in 2005 and that led us to retire at the end of 2005, because of complications. In 2007 he developed Parkinson’s Disease, which we found to be related to his migraines. He takes strong drugs for the management of both.

The drugs and the diseases have affected him. Sometimes it’s bits of memory, other times it can be “fitting the pieces of puzzle together.”

He can be helpful, or then again, he can forget about doing what I just asked him. But if I remind him again, then I’m nagging. I have to pick my battles.

And sometimes, it’s just easier to do the damned thing myself.

As for married life, next month we celebrate our forty-sixth anniversary. We’ve got two grown kids, three grandkids. We have a good life.

Quite a few of my high school classmates are gone now. Some were very dear to me, and I’ll miss them. Comparing myself to one of them is inane. The arthritis in my neck is the latest in a long, long line of difficulties in my life. My biggest one is that I’m almost completely deaf. I don’t think disabilities are something you can trade off with other people, nor would I want to.

Believe it or not, I like my life. I really do. But pain, chronic pain depresses the living shit out of me sometimes, and I posted here to blow off steam.
~old VOW
(“Haven’t been married very long.” I’m gonna giggle about that for a while!)

10

~VOW, you two young marrieds are so cute.

Isn’t it funny how an ability in one aides/abets an inability of another, in folks who co-habitate?
Curious how that works.

11

I’ve told many people that both of us are falling apart and so decrepit that the two of us together make one whole person!
~VOW

12

Awwww! That’s really sweet.

13

Sequential frozen shoulders is sheer hell. No sooner did the right shoulder get back to more or less normal range of motion without (very much) pain than the left one decided that looked like fun and now it’s doing stupid shit. It’s really amazing how much you need your shoulders–I thought the bad hip, bad knee and bad back sucked but this is a whole 'nother magnitude of suckage and I Do Not Approve. Harumph. Can’t take anything for it either because I’m on blood thinners. Yeah. Not impressed.

14

Get used to it. I remember my 92yo mother complaining that every single part of her hurt. I’m almost caught up with her. It seems that every day there’s a new pain somewhere. And it’s cumulative. And the only painkiller I’m allowed to take is Tylenol, which doesn’t do much.

And these days, I’m afraid to go to any medical facility.

15

That’s why I refuse to have anything to do with it. :stuck_out_tongue:

16

I feel your pain. Like, literally.

Thing is I’m a little undersized, so most table heights etc are all a titch to high, couches a sliver to high, etc. So I have spent a lifetime squirrelling up one leg under me, or discreetly sitting cross legged beneath the table linen. Same on a couch or any seat where my feet aren’t quite to the floor fully, one or both legs end up beneath me. And, while I’ve never weighed much, I’ve always been pretty strong, wiry and bendy. That Asian squat? I could do it for days!

And then, suddenly in my mid sixties, nuh uh, not no more. Five, six minutes tops till my bones start to sing with pain. I’m so thick headed, it’s taken me ages to break this habit, even though I end up in pain for hours or days. Slowly though I’m getting it. I’m not happy about it, but I’m getting it. I can still bend, squat, sit cross legged, etc, just not for very long is all. I pay very close attention now, and straighten up smartly and swiftly.

I’m not complaining too loudly, things could be so much worse, of course, but it’s extremely annoying followed by both physical pain and the painful knowledge that I should have KNOWN better! I do know better!

Still sucks!

17

For me, only comparatively recently. Sciatica, and it sucks. I’m not seventy yet, and overall still feel young, but age is creeping up on me. No cognitive decline that I’ve noticed, though I was remembering a very kind and attractive women who was my neighbor around twenty years ago, give or take a year, and she was very helpful when I was facing a crisis,–and dang!–I can’t remember her name. We weren’t too close, --she had another guy and all that–and a fabulous Aussie cattle dog. Maybe it’s because we lived next-door, so it was “hi” rather than “John” or “Susan”.

18

My health has always been pretty good; just about the only time I saw a doctor was for regular physicals and the occasional “I’m not feeling well, so I think I’d better get it checked out” visit.

Then a few years ago everything started to go to hell. Chest pains led to having two stents installed, an MRI showed that I had fatty liver disease, I developed bleeding in my stomach which has meant multiple endoscopies and periodic blood infusions for anemia.

I think my warrantee expired.

19

As my missus reminds me anytime we win at life, “Two half wits make a whole wit.”

If I may attribute more insightfulness to evolution than it deserves: Once you’re past breeding age, you’ve really not got much to contribute to the tribe that someone younger and more productive can do better and with less complaining. And don’t say “but experience…” because we all know old people memories are unreliable. When your kids are old enough to breed, your job is almost over. Your final act is one of self-sacrifice. You see, even worn out and obsolete, nobody really wants to get eaten by predators. The only way to keep the old people from running from danger instead of sacrificing themselves for the safety of the breeders, is to make it painful to even move. Just sit there and take your eating so the rest of the tribe can escape. And that’s why getting old hurts.

– Inigo Montoya,
Half Wit

20

My brother and I used to joke that between us we had enough working parts to assemble one reasonably functional person. Couldn’t even manage that these days.

j