No, we did not wake up in Quebec City this morning. We were able to get in contact with our travel agent, so the cruise, the airline tickets, and the shore excursions are all canceled. We were already refunded the shore excursion money and the port fees and taxes from the ship. For the rest we have to submit a claim form to Travel Guard after we see the family doctor to get her to fill out the form.
Tomorrow morning I will call the family doctor and try to get in right away for follow up. The ER doctor said to get an MRI. I also want a scan of my shoulder because it started to hurt while on the train to Evey in July. In three months, it has only gotten worse. Now I'm wondering if it isn't also arthritis in there, too.
Once I was on the muscle relaxer, pain pill, and prednisone yesterday, I definitely got some relief. I was not pain free, but there was relief. Then this morning, when all the drugs were out of my system, it was just as painful as ever to get out of bed to get going. At 9:30 a.m. I took the pain pill and the muscle relaxer after eating breakfast. An hour later, I am definitely feeling that the edge of the pain is dulled. I still can't walk pain free, but I'm sitting still in front of the computer pain free, so that's something.
I am eager to move on to the rest of the learning curve for managing this. I talked to Evey for quite awhile yesterday. When she worked in the PT clinic, she saw many people with this exact diagnosis getting some relief from the PT. I fully expect either the family doctor or the orthopedist, whom I also hope to see this week, will send me to PT. I also have a good friend who is a yoga instructor and her husband is a massage therapist. I might be able to use their services in the future, too, to help manage this condition. I plan to ask the doctor if these things are safe to pursue.
Unfortunately, there is no cure for this. There are ways to manage the flare ups and try to have more good days than bad. Since I didn't know I had it, I have just allowed it to progress to this critical point where the flare up is especially bad. Now that I know I have it, I will do what I can to be sure I never allow it to reach this point again once it calms down.
Weight loss and exercise are always the answers! I know that trying to increase my movement, especially non-weight bearing exercise like swimming or water aerobics will help build muscle strength as well as burn more calories. I also am working on slowly losing more weight, but that is not going to be fast.
I had an excellent day yesterday. I had 1500 calories but only 76 carbs. My blood sugar reading this morning was NORMAL, 96, for the first time since mid-August! I was thrilled to see that. Now I'm going to try hard to keep the daily carbs around 80 or less every day. I also had one Oreo thin, which has 5.2 carbs and 35 calories, at 10 p.m last night as a little snack to have something in my stomach when I took the muscle relaxer at bedtime. Mark thinks having a little carb at night is the way to have a better blood sugar reading in the morning. Often I have not eaten any carbs after dinner, so maybe that little bit did help.
I also was down in weight this morning. The scale said 267.4 this morning, which is where I was about two weeks ago, so I was quite happy with that. Let the weight loss continue!
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