As I blogged about earlier, last night the pain in my elbows was so bad I could barely sleep last night, even with a massive overdose of Alieve. I called my physiotherapist, but she doesn’t work on Fridays. I called my doctor, but he doesn’t work on Fridays. I had read somewhere that sometimes tennis elbow responds to cortisone injections, and so even though the only cortisone injection I’ve had hurt like hell going in and didn’t do much, I was desperate enough to try it. The doctor’s nurse does work on Fridays, however, and she arranged an appointment for me at a “urgent care” orthopedist.
Continue reading “Progress, of a sort”
Category: Pain
This is not good.
In spite of 3 weeks of physio therapy and behaviour modification (better typing position, taking breaks from typing to stretch), and a month and a half of not kayaking, last night my left elbow was more painful than it has ever been before. I had to ice it and take three Alieve tablets before bed, and I still didn’t sleep very well. Shouldn’t I be seeing improvement, not worsening at this point?
Thursday morning
Yesterday my physio gave me a 24 hour iontophoresis patch. Kind of a cool idea – it uses two patches, one with the drug, one with an electrolyte solution, and a metallic strip joining them. The idea seems to be to form an electrical circuit along the muscle and have the ions of the drug migrate through the muscle. I have no idea if it works. This morning that elbow feels worse than the other one, but it normally feels worse.
She also told me to stop doing that stretch that hurts so much.
I’m beginning to wonder if the quick diagnosis of tennis elbow was correct – the pain feels more like it’s in the joint than in the tendon.
Wednesday morning
I think icing last night helped, at least up until the part where the bag leaked and the ice water spilled all over the sheets.
More taking breaks and stretching. That one stretch still hurts – I think I’m going to cut it out. I’ve got physio again tonight, I’ll see if she can give me a better stretch.
Tuesday
Well, I took the physio’s advice about taking breaks and stretching more often. I can’t say whether it helped or not, but it probably didn’t hurt. I’m currently icing one elbow – I don’t have enough ice to do both.
In spite of her advice on how to modify it, one of the stretches still seems to hurt – not a nice pulling out the tension stretch type hurt, but a “damage the ligaments” type hurt. Bad hurt. I’ve got to figure out how to stretch “A” without hurting “B”.