Wednesday, January 22, 2014

"I'm Bored"

These are words we never (and I mean never) hear around our house. Most of the time we don't even have the time to get to everything we would love to do, so I was sincerely shocked when I heard those words come out of Stacy's mouth.

Let me explain . . .

About a week ago the right side of her neck started hurting. Any of you who know Stacy well know that she has a neck that is very sensitive to stress--and by stress, I mean strain on the muscles. She has to sit in the middle of the theater so she doesn't have to twist to see the screen. Sitting next to someone at a restaurant can make her neck flare up because she isn't looking straight at them. This kind of stuff. So, her neck started hurting, bad enough to be troublesome but not so bad as to prevent her from going out to eat or seeing friends. Most of this was made possible by keeping a hot rice sock on her neck constantly.

Then on Monday, she was explaining something about Martin Luther King since we were about to watch his speech. She was mid-sentence and the left side of her neck went into total spasm. This is the kind of thing that brought tears to her eyes and made her immediately collapse on the sofa. For the past two days there have been lots of tears--because of both pain and frustration. By Monday night it was so bad she could hardly lay down without pain and spent the entire night laying on her back, but not really sleeping. She was so stiff from sleeping in one position that she was sore everywhere. Without going into a million details, here are some of the remedies we've been through:

Ibuprofen
Icy Hot patches
Kava kava
Direct heat
Osteopathic Manipulation
Acupuncture
Hot showers
Cursing

Here are some things she's been able to do since the pain got really severe:

Watch TV
Watch the snow come down
Eat, sort of

Here are things she'd rather be doing:

Walk around normally
Eat at the dinner table
Lay in whatever position she feels like
Read and respond to her emails
Blog
Read a book
(She missed a dental appointment because of this, but I don't think she's overly sad about that one.)

So, here's the $64,000 question:

WHAT SHOULD SHE DO?!

She's bored, and that is so not like her.

TV is old already. We hardly watch it in the first place and she has nothing that she watches that I don't

Reading would be nice, but holding a book for that long in that position only makes things worse.

The computer is out for the same reason.

See the problem?

Can you imagine Stacy being bored? Yeah, that's what I thought.

Have I mentioned how frustrated she is? Do I really need to mention it? Yeah, you get it.

HELP!

11 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ugh. Big time bummer! My suggestion: an audio book. Turn off the lights, snuggle under a blanket, close your eyes, and while (is that the correct spelling?) away the time lost in a good story.

LMW said...

Oh, dang! I hope she gets better soon! I think the audio book suggestion is a good one. I hope a treatment can be found to fix this problem in general.

Gramsy said...

So sorry to hear Stacy isn't feeling well. If there is a time to be down it is when it's cold and icky outside. If it were warm and sunny you would really feel like you were missing out. Hope she feels better soon. The audio book sounds good.

Anonymous said...

Sounds like a real bummer.

A couple of things that came to mind--

Has she tried a chiropractor?

Might be a great time to rent documentaries, or watch an entire season of a tv show she heard about but never got into, or become familiar with the talents of early 90's rap artists, like Coolio, or be awed by the genius behind the lyrics of Nicki Minaj's Super Bass.

Hope she feels better soon, because for some reason I don't think she'll get too excited about any of these ideas.

Anonymous said...

In case you haven't seen this Stacy--

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9573kGBtuE

Boquinha said...

Thanks, all. It's been a rough week - severe pain, inability to move my head much for a couple of days, and going crazy not knowing what to do with myself. I'm doing better. It's not 100%, but I'm way more functional.

Good point, Fran!

Jimmy, wow. That was . . . wow.

As for chiropractic . . . Mark can essentially do that. He does osteopathic manipulation, which is very similar. We've tried many things. I think the combination of all the things we've done has been helpful overall.

LMW said...

Yay! I'm glad you're on the mend!

Boquinha said...

Thanks, LMW! I enjoy hearing from you - a nice boost to my mood. :)

Dave Johnson said...

Last week SUCKED. I think I felt a little like you guys do when I'm in the hospital - like one of us is just out of reach and life is on hold a bit. I could tell Stacy was getting really bad the day before. At least it's not usually this bad.

And since she's feeling better now, we should totally go bungie jumping.

Dr. Mark said...

And after the bungee jumping, skydiving . . .

Emily said...

Just awful. I'm so sorry! Maybe you could try learning to use the force?