Aches and pains update

I am happy to report my shoulder is mostly better now. I must admit I haven’t been doing the physio exercises quite as much as I should. I am doing them just less consistently than I can. I suspect when I next try to swim it will be fine so here’s hoping.

Meanwhile, my plan to go out on a bike ride on the weekend was thwarted when my inner tube burst. It was warm and pleasant and would have been perfect for a winter ride. Alas it wasn’t meant to be and I still need to get a replacement so I can use my bike again.

Since I couldn’t go that way I decided to tackle some of the jungle of the back and side yards. Weeds and grass had grown quite high but I hadn’t mowed due to lack of dry days. Our mower is electric powered so I need to be careful of that. While it wasn’t totally try, it was enough to work on it. I spent a couple hours, at least trying to clear stuff out. Much of my time was spent pulling out the weeds. I neglected to use gloves at first so now I’m dealing with prickle injuries from some of the weeds. Some of them look a lot like whitehead pimples although they don’t hurt or itch. Just look kind of iffy. At the end I cleared out quite a large area and it looks so much better now. We actually have space to move and now the dogs have less excuse to do their business on the patio…although they seem to be stuck in those bad habits at the moment so will have to be vigilant and stop them doing that.

So the next day I had a lot of pain in my big toe on the right foot. I have regular issues with toe pain, usually at night and I attribute this to arthritis pains. Well this time it got much worse than usual and just walking was painful. I bought some Voltaren (generic version) cream and later took some painkillers. It didn’t totally go away but was much better. It’s still more irritated than usual several days later but not painful like it was. My guess is I aggravated the problem while doing the garden work. And/or it flared up coincidentally. Or maybe a bit of both.

There were a couple other issues that caused a fair amount of problem but I won’t go into that here. Just to say that I need to plan ahead a bit more in the future.

Yes, this is one of those woe is me posts. I guess it doesn’t help that my anxiety is so bad due to the stress of dealing with family. I do know it will all pass but it’s just the getting through it that needs to be done.