Costochondritis, Pain, and Weight
So I have recently discovered that there is a nasty little link between Costochondritis, the level of pain, and how much movement and weight you are putting on your torso. First, if you follow the blog, you know that I’m only about one and a half years into Costochondritis and that I have also been having a very painful time with it.
Recently my wife has been laid up and I have been having to not only take on my normal load but also take on some of her load, like feeding the horses and moving the water jugs carrying the laundry, and things like that. The past month (since she has been laid up) I have really been in a new high level of pain from the costo. My ribs have been on fire and it is not easy to deal with. I’m on Tramadol for it, and that isn’t cutting it, so I was prescribed Hydrocodone for the days when the pain is out of control. Sadly since I have been doing new or different lifting, I have been in more pain.
We get 5-gallon water jugs delivered to the house. They leave them on the front patio, as we often get 8-10 jugs a month. The jugs are only 40 pounds each and I usually carry one in each hand to help me balance out better. And I have noticed that the next day after moving them, I’m certainly much more sore than normal, but usually sore, not heavy or sharp pains.
This weekend, I spent two eight-hour days at the farm, doing field maintenance and setting up the two new portable stalls (with the help of my son and daughter for some of it).
This meant, cutting hundreds of feet of weeds, moving hoses, securing this and that, picking up and delivering three round bales of hay, and setting up two portable horse stalls. Along with some minor fence repairs.
Needless to say, come Monday, I’m really sore and having shooting pains on both sides of my ribs, but they are very manageable.
However, late last week, I got to a state of ‘overdoing it’ (‘overdoing it’ is like my motto sometimes), that I nearly asked my wife (who isn’t supposed to be driving right now) to take me to the ER, because I can’t breathe as it hurts too much. I was having hot sharp and intense pain on both my left and right side, front and back of my ribs. I got my hydrocodone and I sat down, more like slouched, onto the couch, getting myself into a spot that wasn’t as painful and waited. I calmed myself down and got out of the panic I was in, I don’t normally panic about much at all, but this time I was starting to really freak out. After about 20 minutes I could feel the hydro working and the pain starting to subside. After about 10 more minutes the crisis was averted and I doing so much better.
But this is when I discovered the correlation between the levels of pain and how much I use my arms and upper body to lift things.
