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Me 'n' Mitch
Oct. 23rd, 2020 07:59 pmIf you can find that picture of Mitch McConnell that CNN has been posting, with his busted-up face and horrifically-bruised right hand, that's what my left hand is starting to look like.
Moscow Mitch has obviously taken another fall. He wrecked himself at home, about a year ago, but refuses to talk about this one. (Here's the link--https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/22/politics/mitch-mcconnell-bruised-hands/index.html)
That's just one of the differences between Mitch and myself. He won't talk about his injuries, but I will. About mine. Because I don't really know anything about his.
So this morning, while I was sitting in my office taking my daily blood pressure readings, I suddenly got this horrific pain that started in the upper left side of my back and then seemed to intensify as it moved towards the front.
Like I said, I was just sitting there with the cuff around my left upper arm and, when it started, I thought, WTF? I tried to remain in place because I was about to take the last of 4 readings, but it got so intense that I tore off the cuff and jumped up.
I couldn't take a deep breath without even more pain and, as it wrapped around to the front of my chest, I thought OMG, am I having a heart attack?
The only rational thought that I was finally able to wring out of this blinding pain was that it might be a muscle cramping somewhere in my upper back.
I'd been getting those, in recent years, in my feet, legs, and occasionally my sides or lower back, and I'd sometimes wake up at night in the grip of one of these horrifically powerful spasms.
In fact, I'm convinced that it was one of those that tore the cartilage in my knee, necessitating surgery.
Anyway, I'd never had one at the present location and that's what sent me to the edge of panic. What the hell do I do now, drive myself to one of those immediate care places down on West Genny, call an effin' ambulance, what?
Because nothing I was doing, no upper body stretches, no arm movement, nothing was helping.
Finally, I ran downstairs and grabbed a couple Ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet. I don't like taking them, especially on an empty stomach, but nothing works as well for me against inflamed and spasming muscles--if that's what this was.
Then I ran back upstairs, still thinking it might be cardiovascular, and wrapped the cuff back on to see if the machine might pick up some sort of irregular heart rhythm.
Which was stupid, because I sure as heck know what an SVT feels like and it wasn't like this.
But I sat down, wrapped the cuff, and felt the machine crank up, and up, and up. Because, duh, I'd just run down, and then back up, a flight of stairs.
But the PAIN and the LOCATION of it and not being able to BREATHE deeply!
So I jumped back up, ripped off the cuff, and started rotating my arm the way I do to warm up my shoulders before an upper body workout.
It's basically several reps of a crawl stroke and then the same of a back stroke with the arms fully extended. I call it the Don Quixote Windmill.
But BIG mistake in my office where a rear dormer bumps out of the roofline and is framed with a run of rafters that end in a very sharp corner just before the doorway that I was about to walk through.
And which I managed to Karate chop with the 5th metacarpel of my left hand. And thereby ruptured the blood vessel that runs along that edge of the hand.
Even though I kept it elevated, as I ran downstairs to grab a bag of frozen peas out of the fridge to use as a cold-pack, it swelled up like a freaking Easter ham in about two minutes. And will no doubt be a deep purple within another day.
And that's the story of how Moscow Mitch and I came to have matching hands. Well, my side of it, anyway.
Because, like I said, good luck finding out anything about his.
I mean, maybe he said something off the record like, "May God turn me purple if I'm a lying, hypocritical SOB."
But, you know, I'm just spit-ballin' here...
LPK
Dreamwidth
10.23.2020
Moscow Mitch has obviously taken another fall. He wrecked himself at home, about a year ago, but refuses to talk about this one. (Here's the link--https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/22/politics/mitch-mcconnell-bruised-hands/index.html)
That's just one of the differences between Mitch and myself. He won't talk about his injuries, but I will. About mine. Because I don't really know anything about his.
So this morning, while I was sitting in my office taking my daily blood pressure readings, I suddenly got this horrific pain that started in the upper left side of my back and then seemed to intensify as it moved towards the front.
Like I said, I was just sitting there with the cuff around my left upper arm and, when it started, I thought, WTF? I tried to remain in place because I was about to take the last of 4 readings, but it got so intense that I tore off the cuff and jumped up.
I couldn't take a deep breath without even more pain and, as it wrapped around to the front of my chest, I thought OMG, am I having a heart attack?
The only rational thought that I was finally able to wring out of this blinding pain was that it might be a muscle cramping somewhere in my upper back.
I'd been getting those, in recent years, in my feet, legs, and occasionally my sides or lower back, and I'd sometimes wake up at night in the grip of one of these horrifically powerful spasms.
In fact, I'm convinced that it was one of those that tore the cartilage in my knee, necessitating surgery.
Anyway, I'd never had one at the present location and that's what sent me to the edge of panic. What the hell do I do now, drive myself to one of those immediate care places down on West Genny, call an effin' ambulance, what?
Because nothing I was doing, no upper body stretches, no arm movement, nothing was helping.
Finally, I ran downstairs and grabbed a couple Ibuprofen from the medicine cabinet. I don't like taking them, especially on an empty stomach, but nothing works as well for me against inflamed and spasming muscles--if that's what this was.
Then I ran back upstairs, still thinking it might be cardiovascular, and wrapped the cuff back on to see if the machine might pick up some sort of irregular heart rhythm.
Which was stupid, because I sure as heck know what an SVT feels like and it wasn't like this.
But I sat down, wrapped the cuff, and felt the machine crank up, and up, and up. Because, duh, I'd just run down, and then back up, a flight of stairs.
But the PAIN and the LOCATION of it and not being able to BREATHE deeply!
So I jumped back up, ripped off the cuff, and started rotating my arm the way I do to warm up my shoulders before an upper body workout.
It's basically several reps of a crawl stroke and then the same of a back stroke with the arms fully extended. I call it the Don Quixote Windmill.
But BIG mistake in my office where a rear dormer bumps out of the roofline and is framed with a run of rafters that end in a very sharp corner just before the doorway that I was about to walk through.
And which I managed to Karate chop with the 5th metacarpel of my left hand. And thereby ruptured the blood vessel that runs along that edge of the hand.
Even though I kept it elevated, as I ran downstairs to grab a bag of frozen peas out of the fridge to use as a cold-pack, it swelled up like a freaking Easter ham in about two minutes. And will no doubt be a deep purple within another day.
And that's the story of how Moscow Mitch and I came to have matching hands. Well, my side of it, anyway.
Because, like I said, good luck finding out anything about his.
I mean, maybe he said something off the record like, "May God turn me purple if I'm a lying, hypocritical SOB."
But, you know, I'm just spit-ballin' here...
LPK
Dreamwidth
10.23.2020
