Shoulder

The pain in my shoulder and arm is still there, it doesn't seem to have got any less in the past week. At least I now know that it is not my heart - both the ECG and blood and urine tests showed no signs of anything amiss there. I've also stopped 'feeling' my heart when it beats. The doctor did a full range of tests and everything looks normal. The pain now starts as a tense ache in my left shoulder and goes along my triceps down to my left elbow. Most of the time it's a dull ache, but two or three times a day it flares up and is agony. There's no obvious trigger, it can happen while I'm standing up, walking, sitting down, working, lying in bed. The doc's latest diagnosis in tendonitis, and he prescribed an injection of something or other and anti-inflammatories. The latter don't seem to be making any obvious difference. Apparently the injection will have a progressive effect in the coming days.

I've been starting to think that RSI might be playing a role, although the irony is that I started using speech recognition 6 weeks ago and am now typing a lot less than I used to. Who knows, maybe it's this change (posture, mouse use, etc.) that has triggered or contributed to the problem. I am scheduled for an x-ray (or possibly a scan, not quite sure) in Torrelavega next Thursday. Hopefully the pain will have gone by then and I can cancel.

I've been wanting to start doing some gentle jogging or cycling again, to see if I can 'run it off', but the weather has been atrocious this week and it's been impossible to get out. Poor Anja only has 3 weeks here this time, and so far it's only been lashing rain and gale force winds.

Daniel also went to the doctor this morning. We've noticed what look like little blisters on the palms of his hands and soles of his feet, and thought we'd better get it checked out. It turns out it's not the dreaded lurgy, as we feared, but a kind of dermatitis. We're supposed to put Vaseline on them and wait a few days and see what happens. They don't seem to bother him at all, except when we look at them, and then he starts shouting out 'pain, pain' and whimpering ;o)

Work-wise it was fairly quiet last week, and I decided at the weekend to start aggressively looking for more work, and to get the maximum out of the speech recognition and thereby increase my productivity. This has worked very well so far, my productivity is up by 40-50% and up to now I've been getting enough work in to keep up with the pace.

Speaking of which, I'd better get on …