Setback

I know I have been absent here.  The gap between posts tells the story. When I am silent, I am struggling.  Over the last month I have steadily gone downhill. These last two weeks I have felt as poorly as I felt six months ago.

During this time I have spent a few hours each day in the barn but I have pushed myself to do so. As much as I love the horses and want to be with them my body still fights me. After that short time outside I am done. My body aches and my brain turns to mush. I feel so bad I don't even want to talk and  anyone who knows me knows I am feeling pretty lousy when I have no words. It feels like I am going backwards instead of forward. That possibility really frightens me.

I never imagined when I began my journey with horses my health would be an issue and having it turn into one really caught me off guard. The welfare of my horses has always been forefront in my mind and I measure my progress in what I can do for them. This latest setback matters most in how it relates to them so I need to understand what is behind it and fix it if I can.

I have become used to the ups and downs of my recovery. It seems like a step forward is often followed by two or three backward so the idea of bad days was not alarming to me at first. It was only when those days began to string together into longer and longer stretches and some unusual body aches surfaced that I realized this was not just another episode of me overdoing.

Looking back it started about a month ago. I was experiencing some unusual soreness in my abdomen,  both arms and shoulders, along with some weird little muscles cramps and twinges here and there and my pain levels were escalating.  The most obvous was the tightness in my shoulders and upper arms that soon digressed into sharp twinges if I moved my arms in certain positions. My other symptoms were not nearly as obvious because they mirrored symptoms I have already been experiencing, it was just the level of them that seemed to be building and I was convinced it was caused by me over doing in some way.

I fist noticed the unusual pain in my arms and shoulders a day here and a day there until it finally became a constant aching. The last two weeks I began to experience stabbing pains if I moved my arms anywhere away from my body.  By Saturday I found myself unable to flip an egg in the frying pan. Searing pain shot up my arm, to my shoulder and across my back and I finally realized this was not just a normal part of my recovery process brought on by me pushing myself.

Looking back over the last month for anything different that might have affected me only a couple of things come to mind. One is emotional and something I cannot fix but it still eats at me. The other is a new doctor and new medications so I explored those as a possible explanation for my current condition.

I checked the possible side effects of both medications and found symptoms I am experiencing there. I decided I would quit taking the offending prescription to see if those symptoms subside. Hopefully it will be as simple as that and I will be back on my feet and feeling more normal soon.

While this goes on I can't help but notice the horses are hairing up and the sun setting earlier and earlier each day. There was so much I wanted to do this summer and now it is nearly gone. I wonder what fall has in store for us. I was sure hoping I'd be getting some horses started this year.