back exercises (baxercises?)

Between emails, facebook comments and messages, conversations, and internet research, I've come up with several more exercises and stretches for my back, which seem to be having a positive effect. At the very least, I'm not in the state of misery I was all weekend. The suggestion that it might be my upper trapezius and/or rhomboid presents a likely cause of my problems. This picture shows the muscles that I swear I have been feeling for weeks.

For those who might be interested in stretching, the Mayo Clinic has a nice set of back exercises here, although I'd been doing most of them for weeks. Oddly enough, the exercises below - specifically number 5 - while simple, really seem to have made a difference. I found them on ideafit.com. I suspect that my students might be wondering about my tendency to do #5 in class.

And I'm going to see about going to an orthopedist later this week.

mapping the pain

I've had back pain on and off for years. It usually centers around my left shoulder blade. Sometimes it works its way down along the left side of my spine. Other times it creeps up my neck. On really bad days it crawls up into my skull and gives me a killer headache. Normally this nonsense lasts for about two or three days. I plaster myself with sticky pas (medicated pain patches) and take a lot of naproxen, and the pain goes away. Unfortunately, a side effect of growing older seems to be that the life expectancy of my back/shoulder pain has increased from a few days to several weeks. Needless to say, this ridiculousness is growing nigh intolerable.



I'm really not a big fan of going to see doctors, and I've been trying to deal with this via stretching and relaxation, pas, and naproxen. However, at this point it seems I'm going to have to give in and see a doctor. Not at all looking forward to that, but it would be nice to not ache all the time. I'll keep you posted.