A not-so-sunny outlook as summer settles in

This time a week ago I was nursing some strained oblique muscles.  I'm happy to report that that particular ailment seems to be a thing of the past.

Unfortunately, I'm still living with pain and tightness in the right side of my neck.  I haven't mentioned it in a while, so here's a quick history: I arrived home from my trip to South Africa on the 5th of February.  On February 9, I received the second of two shingles vaccine shots, and by the following day I was feeling awful.  For some 24 hours I suffered from severe chills that made me clench into a fetal position as I lay in bed.

By the day after that, I was feeling better.  But the one thing that lingered was the discomfort in my neck, and that condition has lingered, and lingered, and lingered some more.  I sought treatment from my chiropractor, who performed adjustments and some dry needling, but after a few weeks of that I was doing no better.  My chiropractor suggested I get a neck brace to stretch the area, and I did, but after trying that for a couple of weeks I was seeing no change.

I'm pretty sure this is the result of the impinged nerves in my upper spinal cord that an MRI revealed in 2023.  Back then I got a couple of nerve-block injections that had no lasting effect; the next step would have been a surgical procedure that I think would have entailed fusing a couple of vertebrae, but that would have resulted in a loss of range of motion in my neck, and at that time, at least, that seemed worse than what I was already dealing with.

So, these days I'm just living with the discomfort, and I'm really at a loss as to what else I can do.  I keep hoping it'll all run its course and loosen up on its own, but as of now it's showing no signs of doing that.  Will it be with me for the rest of my life?  Hell if I know.  Meanwhile, I'm spending so much time worrying over my 90-year-old mother's condition that navigating the medical care system for my own woes is simply more than I can bear to consider right now.

The neck discomfort is definitely with me in the boat, but it doesn't directly interfere with paddling, so I'm trying my best to find some solace on the water.  There are no big races coming up, so I'm not really training for anything.  It's not like this time last year, when I had a robust fitness program going to get myself lean and mean for a trip through the Grand Canyon.  No, these days my paddling sessions are just mental health breaks, something that allows me to look back on each day and think, "At least one decent thing happened today."

On Saturday I went down to the river and paddled for 50 minutes.  Yesterday I paddled for 40 minutes.  I got something in.  It feels like the best I can do these days.

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