I finished the latest Harry Potter book, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince today. The story moved better than it did in Book V, and I’m pretty sure that’s not just the Lortab speaking.

Spoiler alert! Spoiler alert! There are spoilers behind this cut!

I’m not sure I hurt any less this morning than I have other recent mornings. The pain in my shoulder, should I absentmindedly roll to the right as I’m waking up, is a sharp, “loud” pain that chases all other thoughts out, and clears out the early morning cobwebs with a flamethrower.

This morning, however, my brain told my shoulder to shut the hell up, because we wanted more sleep. Nothing’s torn, nothing’s broken, there’s no need to yell, just conversationally remind us that the right side is a little tender, and we’ll roll back to the left.

I got another two hours of sleep, which I needed badly, because I had an uncharacteristic hour of near hyperactivity last night after popping the 2nd Lortab. I was up until 1:30am musing on political matters, of all things. I definitely would have been better off sleeping.

So, here I am, all painkillers have worn off, and every time my shoulder makes noises about how nice I need to be to it, I tell it to shut up. It’s had almost a week — a week I had other plans for, I might add — and I’m done babying it. There’s some CC impingement, yeah, and so I still have to be careful through some of my usual range of motion, and there’s exercises I need to do, but I’m done treating my shoulder like some blown-glass knick-knack that grandma can’t bear to see tossed around. It’ll get an ice-pack and a hot-pad, but it’s going to have to EARN those by supporting my arm and hand for a spot of cartooning.

The pain in my shoulder has become the whining of a spoiled child. The brat is about to get spanked.

–Howard

Musing on current events… I’m a little miffed at Tom Tancredo for his off-handed remark about bombing Mecca as retaliation should islamist terrorists detonate nuclear devices on American soil. After all, regardless of how important it is that islamofascism be excised, it does no good to the cause of freedom to be seen stooping to the levels of our enemies, even hypothetically. It discredits us all.

Then I think how much worse I could have it. I could be a moderate muslim, reading the rantings of Mohammed Atta’s father, who praises the recent attacks in London, and says that moderate muslims who condemn violence are traitors and non-muslims.

It would be nice if the worst any of us had to worry about was being made to look bad by people who claim to share our faith.

More news today — some good, some bad:

We’ll start with the good news. I got five rows pencilled today. I was pretty achey when I was done, and it was time for my first visit to the physical therapist, so off I went. Aches aside, I was actually feeling pretty good.

More Good News: Of all the medical attention I’ve recieved since getting injured, the winner of the “I felt decidedly better all the way around after you finished with me” award goes to the physical therapist. Not even the drugs made me feel as good as a heat treatment, massage, and some electrostimulation. My shoulder felt BETTER. This wasn’t endorphin-powered euphoria, either. This was “hey, the pain is gone for the first time in DAYS.”

The Physical Therapist was also impressed by my level of knowledge surrounding my injury. He said “you’ve sprained your AC ligament” and I said “Oh. Type 1 Shoulder separation, then.”

Him: “You’ve had shoulder troubles before?”

Me: “No. Google is my friend. I researched shoulder separations based on what the Family Doctor said, and determined that my symptoms were either a Type 1 or Type 2. Either way, no surgery.”

Him: “Good work. You may want to research “impingement” as well. It looks like you’ve got a little bit of that, and that’s part of what we’ll be treating.”

Needless to say, it’s a pleasure to work with a Doctor who trusts me and who won’t treat me like I’m incapable of understanding big words. And as I mentioned above, it was also a pleasure to be feeling so much better.

To celebrate, I drove to a movie. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was very, very nice. It was like a cross between “Batman” and “Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure.” Never having read the book, I can’t judge the film by its true-ness to Roald Dahl’s writings. I will say, however, that I missed the “Oompa-Loompa” song. The Elfman-arranged, Dahl-lyriced, Elfman-sung songs were excellent, but I wanted “Ooompa, Loompa, doompedy-doo.” Oh well.

After the movie I bought some groceries and headed home.

Now for the bad news.

At home I found out that my insurance provider won’t cover physical therapy unless I’ve had surgery. Great… the best medical attention I’ve had since this affair started is the only attention that isn’t covered. I started tensing up immediately, and the pain was back. Grrrr… It hurts just writing about it.

So I took some of my new painkiller, Ultram. Twenty minutes later I had this distinct feeling of “this isn’t doing anything,” followed by “but it’s been a long day, and I wouldn’t mind a nap.” In short, it made me drowsy, and tricked me into thinking it was a NATURAL drowsy.

Then the scary bit: as I lay in bed thinking “maybe the drug is making me drowsy” I noticed that my breathing had slowed down. WAAAY down. I wasn’t doing nearly enough of it. I vaguely remembered reading something about “difficulty breathing” under the list of “rare side-effects,” and decided to call out to Sandra for a little help. Then I fell asleep. When I woke up an hour later I still wasn’t breathing well, but I was pleased and just a tad surprised to still be breathing at all. I staggered downstairs, and announced to Sandra that Ultram was now on my short list (along with Demerol). I won’t be taking any more of it.

So… as I’m writing this my breathing is still shallow, but not nearly as labored as it was three hours ago. I’ll have to settle for some Ibuprofen for pain this evening, since hydrocodone is on the “contraindicated” list for Ultram, and the Ultram won’t be out of my system for another couple of hours at least. The BOTTLE of Ultram, however, will be out of the house in very short order.

Now for the worst news of all: Reading back over this post, I sound like a whiney hypochondriac. GRRRRR.

(crap. I tensed up the shoulder again.)

–Howard