Tag: ouch

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Can I borrow Tiny Tim’s crutch?

About a month ago, I wrote about how I sprained my left foot during rehearsal for Scrooge. At the time, I wasn’t sure if it was my foot or my ankle. Then I was sitting in Dad’s room in the hospital last week just kinda shifting my feet around on the floor and I felt a pretty sharp pain on both sides right at the arch. Yep, there’s definitely something wrong with my foot.

It’s been a few weeks since we finished Trials, Tribulations and Christmas Decorations, so I’ve only had rehearsals on Saturdays for… God knows how many hours. (Today, we ran both acts twice and had a lunch break that lasted close to an hour. We started at 9:00 and finished about 4:45. That’s a lot of singing and dancing and I’m pooped.) But still, you’d think that having so much time off during each week would give my foot plenty of time to heal. That’s what I was thinking, but nope! Still hurts!

My foot is the problem area, but when I went looking at braces and wraps at sporting goods stores, all they had were for ankles. Some of them reached halfway up the shin down to near the ball of the foot, but they didn’t look like they provided much support for the arch. Thus, I headed to a store I could trust: Fleet Farm. Then I headed to the area of the store that had what I was looking for: the equine section.

In the midst of all the horse brushes and kettlebells for horses to hold in their mouths to exercise their necks (no, I’m not kidding), Fleet Farm sells a product called Vetrap. It’s good stuff. It’s basically a self-adhesive Ace bandage. Wrap it snug around something (like, say, the arch of your foot), squish it together and it’ll stay in place. Since all of it adheres to itself, it doesn’t move around, which is good for support and bad when you’re trying to take it off afterward. (You either have to find the end and peel it all off or just cut it with a scissors, which is way easier.)

I had some at home, so I used that today along with my ankle brace for safety and it worked pretty well. That didn’t save my feet as a whole since today was the first time I wore my new dance shoes for an extended period of time, let alone danced in them. But the arch and the outsides of my foot felt okay, so I decided I should go with that instead of buying a thirty dollar ankle brace (no, I’m not kidding about that, either) that might or might not help.

The only downside of the Vetrap I had was that it was purple. At some point during the first run of Act II today, I looked down and saw a very large blotch of purple on my foot. I was starting to freak out until I realized that the tongue of the shoe was sliding down the outside and I was looking at the top of my foot. Whew.

As much as I like purple, I don’t think it’d fit the color scheme for my costume. Thankfully, Fleet Farm sells black Vetrap. Not so thankfully, that section of the shelf was completely empty. Every single color was available except black. Shit.

I decided that my best second option was a dark blue: it shouldn’t look nearly as bright as red or pink under the lights. Or purple, for that matter. I’ll have to check my shoes once in a while, make sure the tongue isn’t sliding around, but I prefer that over going without any support and making my sprained foot worse. After all, walking like a cripple onstage is Tiny Tim’s job.

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Opening night draws first blood!

I know one of my lines is talking about being bitten by a snake, but it almost feels like some of us have been snakebit for real. If things continue the way they’re going so far, I’m hoping we won’t be missing any limbs by the time we finish the production.

I’m not sure where things got jinxed, but it started for me last Saturday while working on the choreography for Scrooge. We were all divided into three groups of four (we now have the proper male/female ratio for dancing in the background). At one point, each group was spinning in a circle ala ring-around-the-rosie and our little group… we may have been spinning a bit too fast. And the room was a bit too small. And we got a bit too close to one of the circles next to us.

In the middle of spinning around, I felt my left foot stop. Well, the inner half of it stopped. The outer half tried to keep going. I immediately let go of people’s hands and limped toward the side of the room. Feeling all of those little bones in your foot spreading out when they’re supposed to be closely connected is… unpleasant. Plus it kinda hurts. I was done dancing after that.

The bottom part of my ankle and my foot around it have been pretty tender since then. It’s not bad enough that I can’t stand or walk around, but it’s tender. I didn’t want to give any sort of self-diagnosis, but I decided that it’s officially a sprained ankle/foot when I looked at the outside of my foot yesterday and saw a bruise had formed below my ankle bone. I did some damage to the ligaments, they started bleeding, it eventually pooled into part of my foot that hadn’t experienced any direct trauma.

That in itself wasn’t a big deal. I bought myself an ankle brace when I drove home on Saturday and I’ve been wearing it off and on since then. It’s always on when I’ve been onstage for Trials, Tribulations and Christmas Decorations.

There’s a scene where Joe, our lead actor, chases me around the room. That wasn’t a big deal last week, but a sprained ankle tends to limit one’s range of motion. But it got better! Or worse, depending on your perspective!

During the course of that scene, Joe was supposed to crawl over the back of a couch while chasing me, fall on the floor, then get up and resume the chase. They put some kind of padding behind the couch for him to land on, but it wasn’t as effective as they would have liked. Right after rehearsal that night, he drove himself to the emergency room and the x-rays revealed a newly-broken bone. We’re not sure if it’s his collarbone or his shoulder, but suffice it to say that his range of motion is really limited.

But the show must go on! We’re trying to keep him from moving his right arm too much, no one’s putting any pressure on that shoulder, someone is ripping off his clothing between scenes… that’s not a recreational thing, he really is supposed to be wearing different outfits during each scene in the first act.

Then there was the chase scene last night. Opening night. The first show with an audience that paid to get into the theater. And I ended up bleeding onstage.

The problem is that at one point, I’m sitting in a chair yelling at Joe. He turns and lunges at my left side. It’s a chair with large arms, so I can’t roll off to the side—the only way I can think of to escape is by lunging out onto the floor toward the right. In doing so, I don’t just land and stay there, of course. I skid a little.

There’s one spot on my right knee that’s felt a little raw during rehearsals the last week, but this was the first time I sat down and noticed some little dark spots in my pants where I’d bled through the fabric. Then when I got offstage, people pointed out that I had skinned my right elbow and had blood showing there as well. Translation: I need to figure out a better way to land when I throw myself out of the chair or I’m going to run out of layers of skin by the third weekend.

Aside from all of that, things have been going pretty smoothly. If something happens to make them go less smoothly, we could have a problem. After all, if I’m out of commission, they’ll need to find a replacement male to do a ring-around-the-rosie in the background for Scrooge.

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“Air Traffic Control, this is Shawn…”

“… coming in for an unscheduled and unpleasant landing.”

With all of the snow and rain that’s been freezing and melting and freezing, the condition of moisture on our driveway has been fluctuating on a pretty regular basis. A few times, we’ve had to clear off over six inches of snow. Last week, it was turning to water and running into the street. Now the temperature has dropped below 32 degrees again and according to my dad, “It’s slicker than slick outside.”

I was walking down the front steps to drive to play rehearsal this evening. (I’m working behind the scenes instead of being on stage this time, but it’s still fun.) I keep my car parked in front of the garage that’s right next to the steps. There have been several instances where I brushed the snow off my car and slipped on a patch of ice located immediately in front of it. No casualties, but I knew it was there. Tonight, for some ungodly reason, it never occurred to me that the melting and freezing might have made that patch of ice bigger.

My foot hit the bottom of the steps and I was airborne.

In retrospect, I think I landed pretty well. Sure, my legs shot up into the air and I landed flat on my back, but I cleared the steps so I didn’t hit any edges. Well, most of me cleared the steps: the back of my head introduced itself to one of the decorative bricks sitting next to the bottom step. Thankfully, my winter hat is made of a thick cotton that’s long enough for me to fold up on itself, so the two layers cushioned the impact. Aside from the potential loss of dignity (and who really needs that, anyway?), I strained the left side of my neck and that’s about it.

I ended up being late to rehearsal: I didn’t plan extra time for brushing and scraping off my car plus a few more brief slips on the driveway—I was taking short steps to maintain a tight center of gravity, so I stayed upright. I eventually made it there in one piece, then drove home and walked up the front steps in one piece as well, going the long way around the car to avoid that booby-trapped section of the driveway. I can usually remember a lesson after learning it the hard way just once.

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But I’m good at slouching!

The back pain that started on Monday wasn’t going away. I normally sleep on my side and at one point last night, I tried rolling from left to right and couldn’t. Well, I suppose I could have tried harder, but excruciating pain is not my preferred reason for waking up in the morning. Thus, I had to roll on the front using my elbows and knees instead of just rolling over on my back. Also thus, I paid a visit to my friendly neighborhood chiropractor this afternoon.

The problem is that my L4 vertebra (way down at the base of my lower back) and pelvis sometimes get out of alignment. That also means that at random times, I’ll feel pain on the right side of my right shin. Good stuff. The doc gave me an adjustment, then declared, “You’re all fixed!” Part of doctor’s orders: ice my back and only sit in hard chairs, nothing soft because soft encourages slouching. Unfortunately, I slouch naturally.

I’ve been doing it for many, many years. I blame it on being tall because everything is “down there”. When I was taking the midterm in class on Monday (also when my back was getting noticeably uncomfortable), I had to hunch over the table to write my answers. When I ate dinner this afternoon, I bent over the table so I wouldn’t spill soup all over my shirt. When I pee, well, that’s just being courteous—I want to make sure I’m aiming into the toilet bowl.

But my point is that I’m using to having my back bowed, stretched out, resting against something. I spent an hour or two using a hard chair before I started to get sore from the lack of support. Screw doctor’s orders: I went downstairs to lie back down on my bed. I’ve been resting here for a while and I’m starting to feel better. I should wait for another hour or two to ice my back again, though I could probably eat a little something and take some Advil to help relax the muscles as well. Regardless, until society finds a way to move stuff higher instead of keeping it all “down there”, screw doctor’s orders: I’m stuck slouching.

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Demand relief and it shall be supplied

Maybe not for everyone, but certainly for our Economics group (“Team Awesome”) today. This last week has been a giant pile of suckage, but now a whole lot of weight has been lifted off our shoulders and we can coast through the rest of the course. Unless the prof decides to ignore the assigned curriculum again—he taught us material from Chapter 8 in our first class and Chapter 15 in the third.

The class started with our midterm exam. Up to this point, we’ve taken one online quiz that was open book and multiple choice. Today, we were told it was short answer and would be more analytical versus multiple choice-style questions. That’s all we knew. Consequently, most people in the class were ruing the experience. (As a side note, since it was short answer, we needed to write our answers with a pencil. I’m used to typing, so my hand was cramping and my handwriting kept getting worse over time.)

Many late hours, several nights with almost no sleep, multiple social obligations abandoned… very uncool. Right now, I think I’m functioning almost entirely because of a large-scale consumption of Mountain Dew. Doing the Dew, baby, yeah…

And did I mention that our group had to make our presentation today? We had an hour to finish the quiz—immediately after the time ran out, our group of six walked up to the front of the room and began presenting a slideshow to the class, discussing a case study that very few people had read. (Everyone is supposed to read every case before it’s presented, but given the midterm today… we asked how many people had read it and I could count the number of hands on two fingers. Three, if you include my middle finger for the professor.)

As part of our group project, of course, we had to write an 8-10 page paper. It ended up being more like 11 or 12, but I’d rather cover more material than accidentally miss something important and have the prof bitch about it later. That was due the day of the presentation, so in the course of a week, we wrote a paper and prepared a presentation along with studying for the midterm.

The best part is that while studying last night, I spent some time lying on my stomach to read, which led to me tweaking my back this afternoon. Thus, I had to stand in front of the room with my group, leaning against the whiteboard and having occasional back spasms. So maybe we’ve been supplied with some stress relief, but these muscle spasms… I don’t think they’ll care very much about my demands.

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Massages can be bad for you

Yeah, I know that sounds counter-intuitive, but I honestly think that’s part of the reason why I haven’t written anything in the last week or so.

My right shoulder hasn’t completely recovered from when I rolled the Explorer down the embankment, so I’ve been getting massages to try to loosen up the muscles in that area. Thankfully, it’s making progress, but the masseuse usually works on some other areas during each session, too. I don’t know how it happens, but muscle tightness migrates on my body. “If you think your shoulder hurts now, just imagine how your lower back will feel by this weekend!”

Unfortunately, sometimes it hurts while she’s working. If any of you have ever had a deep-tissue massage, it basically involves finding tight lumps in your muscles, then pushing down on it reeeeeally hard to get that spot to relax. (I don’t think she’s ever used a steak tenderizer on my back, but I’m not always sure I’d notice.)

“Can you feel this?”
“A little, yeah.”
“I’m putting a lot of pressure on it.”
“… Oh.”

She told me that if there’s a spot that starts to hurt, breathe deeply. This last time, she finished on my shoulder, started working on my neck and that’s what I was doing. In retrospect, I think part of the reason I didn’t tell her to ease off was because I was exhausted and half-asleep—she thought I was asleep—but the jolts in my neck kept me from drifting off completely.

I got through the rest of the evening, went to class for a couple hours (and stayed awake, no less) and everything seemed fine. Everything was not fine when I woke up the next morning.

Nope, when I woke up, I could barely turn my head in either direction. Incidentally, for those of you who have never tried it before, it makes driving way more interesting. Same thing the next couple mornings. It’s getting better, but one problem with having a really sore neck is that there’s not much motivation to lift my head off the pillow (using my neck muscles or pulling it up with my hands) when it’s a lot more comfortable not moving.

Now I’m up and about and feeling much more mobile, but I’ve learned my lesson: no more deep tissue massages for my neck. And along those lines, I should probably watch out for the steak tenderizer, too.