So I've been wanting to share this with all of ya'll for a while, but for a long time, typing it all up was going to require more effort than I felt good enough to commit for reasons that will become obvious shortly. Very few of you may already be privy to some of this info, but now everything is just good enough where I can come clean to everyone.
I all but vanished some eight months ago, only silently slipping in and out for brief spurts of time now and then, being all loner-y and anti-social-like. For that, I apologize, but it really couldn't be helped. To play the game would mostly be an unpleasant experience for me... not due to the game itself nor any of you... but because I was physically unable to pursue the enjoyment that was there to be had. I love it here and so often longed to enjoy myself fully again.
At the beginning of that span of time (or so I thought), I spontaneously developed an injury of some sort in BOTH of my arms--progressing from minor numbness and tingling in my hands to perpetual shooting pains, soreness, tightness, and discomfort radiating from my elbows. For several months, I had lost so much strength in my hands that I could barely put on my own socks and tie my own shoes, let alone deal with everyday tasks in the kitchen or function on the computer without slowly employing the double-index-finger hunt-and-peck technique.
When speaking with friends and family, the first reaction from them would always be "It's carpal tunnel syndrome!" But I couldn't accept that. The circumstances and the symptoms weren't quite aligning just right with anything I ever read about CTS. Other less popularized diagnoses such as cubital tunnel syndrome or ulnar neuropathy exhibit symptoms that were much closer to my own.
At any rate, as I'm sure many of you can relate, the computer is both the tool of my living and the instrument of my pastime, and gradually, fear of the dreaded "S" word began creeping into my thoughts. "I'll take swords for 500, Trebek." (http://www.boreme.com/boreme/funny-2005/celebrity-jeopardy-p1.php) No, no! Not that! I'm talking about surgery. Hopefully the kind that doesn't involve swords.
Even my doctor wasn't ready to immediately dismiss carpal tunnel, but the bilateral nature of the injury concerned him, so my quest led me to the dungeon of Magnetic Resonance Imaging. A confined cave of loud noises, so cold, and so white. Even though the access toll was god-awful, the loot wasn't bad: the MRI came up clean, and nothing was wrong with my neck or spine.
Two rounds of anti-inflammatory meds and one nerve conduction test later, it was confirmed that I did NOT have carpal tunnel syndrome. There were no physical abnormalities to which my doctor could lay blame of cause. It was "just" nerve inflammation. In an odd way, I found this reassuring.
As stress is to stomach ulcers for some, it would seem that a series of stressful events resulting in unconscious, cumulative, psycho-emotional wear and tear led to nerve inflammation in me. Sound kind of far-fetched? Well, it isn't really. In fact, I learned that it may have only been a secondary trigger which started me on this path eight months ago. The primary trigger may actually have been as far back as 16-18 months ago!
That was when a previously thought to be unrelated pain in one of my shoulders first manifested itself, and at the time, I had no inkling as to the cause. Was I sleeping on it wrong? Was it just a sign of aging? At the time, I didn't really think too deeply on it. One day, it simply became quite painful to even attempt to lift my arm to switch the lights on or off. After three or four months, I thought I had exercised it away and had nearly regained my complete range of motion... until I realized the pain had actually migrated out of that shoulder and into the other. It was only a matter of months before what I later learned to be nerve pain found its way down my arms, which is where you came in when I started telling this story.
I guess none of this should be entirely suprising to me, really. I've had a history of being kind of hard on myself. To the point where I even came down with a bout of shingles at the age of 15. If you know anything about shingles, then you know it's not normal to have them at such a young age, but it is one of those family of virii which lives in the nervous system.
Thankfully, with the benefit of hindsight and insight, today I'm in a MUCH better place than I was eight months ago. Most, but not all, of the pain is gone, and I've regained almost all of my hand strength. My daily activities are as normal as they can be right now while taking care not to overdo anything.
There is good news in that I'll be able to make appearances in Norrath a bit more often as you've probably already noticed during recent weeks. However, I'm still not 100% back to normal. I have the occasional bouts of discomfort and burning. I fatigue rather easily and so take my cues for rest with more frequency than I needed to before. I'm once again able to chat more effectively than I could a while ago, but navigation and combat can sometimes be a little tricky. So for the time being, I hope no one will take offense if I fail to respond quickly, take frequent AFK breaks, or take a participatory-lite role.
The desire is certainly there, but to mix my metaphors, I'ma gonna be taking baby steps before I attempt to go swimming in the deep end of the EQ2 pool. That being said, I took advantage of my pseudo-break by replacing my aging rig with a nice new shiny hiney-kicking machine, and it sure do look purty 'round here!
Sincerely yours in rangery aleness,
poJasyn's fingers
Your health comes first man. I do understand that Norrath can be a great escape to maybe even act like nothing is going on heh. Take all the time you need. AFK's are my forte. I don't appreciate you stepping in on my grounds. ;)
:viking2:
Jasyn.
< loves >
We'll take you any which way you can be here. And I have missed you very very much!
:tan: :smitten: :smitten: :tan:
Awwww Jasyn! *hug hug hug hug hug hug hug* :smitten:
It is really great to hear things have been getting better for you though! I wish your recent adventures had been more excellent, and hope coming up they will all be so. You sir, are among the very best of the best.
/adopts best Bill and Ted style voice.
Be excellent to yourself, and party on dude!
Yow...that really is the very definition of dated material....ugh. :P
One. Hope the recovery goes well.
Two. Bill & Ted are always relevant. Always.
First of all, thank you to everyone for your support.
Secondly, I was pursuaded by a wonderful friend of now SEVEN years (!) to share a little bit of extra information if ever it might be useful to someone else out there. In the interest of my tender tissues, I'm just going to paste a portion of an exchange I recently had with someone else about the same topic, which still gets the point across effectively enough:
QuoteI did happen to look into thoracic outlet syndrome a tiny bit but kind of discarded it early on before I started making connections between what was happening in my hands/arms to what had been occurring in my shoulders, plus there were a couple of symptoms that didn't apply to me. The symptoms are almost identical to those of ulnar neuropathy, though. I guess the key distinction is the location of nerve compression, but according to my test results, I don't have any discernable points of compression, which pretty much knocked out the obvious suspects and their close relations. My test results weren't normal, though; they did confirm that nerve inflammation exists. Officially, my doctor tagged me with the following multisyllabic vagueness: ideopathic peripheral neuropathy.
About three to four months into this, I literally stumbled upon a book titled The Mindbody Prescription by Dr. John Sarno, which I credit for altering the way I think about the pain. It presents an argument for establishing a relationship between all of these various pain syndromes and classifying them as a family of similar disorders called tension myositis syndrome, which he in turn links to commonalities in genesis. I was actually amazed if not entirely surprised by the level of relevance that his theories had when applied to my situation, which even led me to draw conclusions to other health nuisances I've dealt with in the past. Without this book, in conjunction with my doctor visits, I'm not sure I would have come as far along as I have even though it's taken forever to get here. That my personal doctor was even unable to identify any of the typical culprits (according to Dr. Sarno in his writing) seems to bolster Sarno's theory counter inductively.
Whether anyone would find a book like this to be effective for them will most likely vary from individual to individual, but I have found it to be a fascinating read.
Most. Righteous. Dude.
:BH: -4-Jasyn!
Anything that means I get to adventure with Jasyn more is a great thing!
Renei will cure that crazy fae too, one of these days. :D
Great to hear that you're getting better! :tan:
And after reading your first post, I have to ask ... are you a professional writer? Because you certainly could be, your writing is so clear and just plain enjoyable to read, whether it's Jasyn stumbling around Norrath or the story of your RL trials.
QuoteRenei will cure that crazy fae too, one of these days.
O M G !
< stares at Renei >
Yanno, if you ever want help 'curing' someone, all you haveta do is call the Nurse of the Year. She'd be GLAD to help!
;D
Zhappy tries to cure Gambyll.... I wanna be a fly on the wall for that. An electricity/fire/ice proof fly, that is.
I am glad you are doing better and we sure missed you!
Quote from: Sagacity on February 20, 2010, 01:19:31 PM
Great to hear that you're getting better! :tan:
And after reading your first post, I have to ask ... are you a professional writer? Because you certainly could be, your writing is so clear and just plain enjoyable to read, whether it's Jasyn stumbling around Norrath or the story of your RL trials.
Aw, shucks. That's very nice of you to say, and I appreciate it! :smitten:
However, I'm a total amateur where that's concerned. Professionally, I do backstrokes through data all week long. I live in Excel, Access, VB/VBA and other more bizarre software packages far, far more than I do Word.