A Fight I Lost
I have shoulder pain. Have had for the last month. I don’t
know why. The doctor said the X-rays that he ordered showed mild arthritis in
my shoulders. It doesn’t feel mild to me, especially when my spoon won’t reach
my mouth at breakfast because my shoulder won’t allow my hand to reach that
unseemly height.
I am now trying to get my shoulders to cooperate by massage,
Bio Freeze, and physical therapy that Marjorie found on the internet. The
therapists are Bob and Brad, the most famous therapists on the internet, in
their opinion. They told me that one of the common causes of shoulder pain is
laying on your shoulder while sleeping. “You can fix this,” they said, by “lying
on your back.” If you can’t sleep while lying on your back, then simply add a
couple of additional pillows that you steal from another bed, they said. So I
did. Last night. And that’s when the fight broke out.
In hindsight, I realize that I stole the wrong pillows. Since
the ‘My Pillow‘guy was too busy playing up to the former President, I used our
foam-filled pillows that are too big and too stiff to do the job of cuddling up
to me and providing support for my ailing shoulder in the way that Bob &
Brad said should be done. They said I should put one pillow next to my torso
and lay a second pillow between the first pillow and my offending shoulder
while I lay on the shoulder that is not sore. It didn’t work. In the middle of
the night the first pillow began taking up too much room while the second
pillow wanted to move around whenever my arm claimed its share of space. When I
tried to alleviate these problems, a fight broke out as I tried to set the
boundaries for each pillow. The pillows won. They ended up taking more of my
sleeping space than I.
I had to get even. I waited for a lengthy pause then I
nudged both pillows to the edge of the bed. After another pause, I pushed
gently and both pillows fell to the floor. That was not a good thing. I awoke this morning with another
sore shoulder, so don’t talk to me.
I plan to attack the problem again tonight. My new strategy
is to find smaller, softer pillows. I will supplement their use with an analgesic
before bed. The analgesic will have the unusual name of Jim Beam.
If this strategy works, I will let Bob and Brad know about
it.
