Greetings, and music request

[resonant]

Hello, world! Sorry to be so absent. My right shoulder now has tendinitis in two places, which is just insult to injury, say I. Chiefly because it hurts to type, which is really cutting into my social life.

Very odd, to live in a world where that last sentence makes sense.

Anyway, I have nothing to offer but a cautious, elbow-close-to-the-body wave, and yet I make requests: Would anyone happen to have an mp3 of Aztec Camera's "Jump" that they'd be willing to share? I'd be ever so grateful.

Never mind; tao saved me, the way he always does!

Comments

[resonant]

I probably should have some arcane rituals of my own! The original problem is what's called calcific tendinitis -- a calcium deposit spontaneously forms on the tendon. (I'm 45, so this is the beginning of stuff falling apart, probably.) It's on the very peak of my right shoulder and affects nearly every way I use the arm.

The new one is in the top of my biceps, and I suspect it's the result of carrying a heavy box of books, which wouldn't have been a problem except that the calcification means that the arm is very weak and that some ordinary movements hurt and have to be avoided. Damn it.

My doctor is skimping on the time he spends with me, so I don't have a clear sense of how to avoid this sort of thing. What I can find on the web assumes it's a repetitive motion injury and suggests that I stretch before I pitch a baseball, which, you know, I would if I did!

[rydra_wong]

My doctor is skimping on the time he spends with me, so I don't have a clear sense of how to avoid this sort of thing.

FWIW, the only useful things I know:

"Eccentric exercise" can be miraculously good for tendinitis (i.e. just doing the "eccentric" half of a weight exercise -- the bit where the muscle is lengthening, as when you're lowering a weight -- in a slow and controlled way. Lifting the weight into position with both hands and lowering it with one is often a good strategy to achieve this).

And strengthening the external rotators and supraspinatus is helpful to ward off shoulder wackiness of various sorts.

However, I don't know anything about calcific tendinitis, so I'm not sure whether any of this would apply. Googling seems to suggest that the medical consensus is pretty much "So, a calcium deposit forms, and ... no, we have no clue why, really. Um. Maybe it'll go away."

[resonant]

I'm rather eager to try the eccentric exercise, probably just because it's called eccentric.

I went here to see exercises to strengthen external rotators, and a lot of them are things my physical therapist recommended last fall, so now I'm trying to do them on both sides. Except the ones that hurt the new injury too much. Damn it.

And, yes, your summary of calc.tendinitis is pretty much what I've been hearing from doctors and physical therapists. Imagine my joy.