wimper

the pains continue

to rip and fold and slide all

over my body

*     *     *     *     *

A surreal one happened last night.

The first sensation was like the rounded end of a metal pen sliding across the bottom of my ribs.  I looked down into the water of the hot tub to see if a branch or something had fallen in the water.  Nothing was there but my side.

Then, the whole segment which had felt as if it had been touched felt more like a copper wire was against the entire segment, about 7-8 inches along the bottom of my right rib cage.

Then, in felt like it was digging into my skin, similar to a cramp one gets while running.  Although, I don't know that what I felt as a cramp was the same as others, so maybe stick with the feeling of the wire digging into me, as if I was cheese being cut.

Then, a folding sensation, and it was done.

I'm getting really tired of this.

*     *     *     *     *

And Fall is here.  We had rain today.  It'll be too cold for me to swim for at least a few days.

The dread of another winter has yet to set upon me.  We still have a few warm weeks, more likely than not, before mother nature starts fucking with me.

I feel foolish, hoping I can find my center before then and get all the parts in their right place.  The odds can't be good.

*     *     *     *     *

Last, I had a near miss on the road today.  The one day this month I get in the car and I have a close call.  Go figure.

The light for my left turn switched to green and I started going.  My car was almost all the way into the intersection when I noticed something in the corner of my eye and hit the brakes, when an SUV of some type runs the red and blazes in front of my car by about 8 feet.

Not that close, but it unnerved me.

The next intersection, less than 100 yards away, was clogged with traffic, and I caught up with the SUV there.

I pulled along side it to find out who this asshole was, only to see an attractive mid 20s woman, her face and attention buried into her smartphone.  "Are you fucking kidding me?" I said.

I've been rattled still all day long.  It is amazing how easy it is to die on our roads with these kind of idiots using them too.

I have been through way too much shit, too much pain, and too much physical rehabilitation to end up road kill because of some stupid piece of shit staring at a phone instead of the road.

I know it happens daily, but this was the first time I saw someone do it.

And had I been just a few seconds later, approaching that intersection when the light changed instead of having been at a stop  (which happens pretty often, even for me, a guy that doesn't drive much), I have no doubt that SUV would have demolished my car.

*     *     *     *     *

I hate stupidity.

A Relative Question

I have already proposed in an earlier post my thoughts on Light being "Dark Matter."  I just think our scientists have their numbers wrong and it is a possible solution.  The following is a question I would love to have answered, however, regardless.

*     *     *     *     *

An imaginary star system, ISS, is 500 light years away from us.

On a certain day, X, two identical robots are built, Robot A and Robot B, robots capable of existing millions and millions of eons.

Less than a minute after creation, Robot A travels just under the speed of light to earth.  Now, the light from the imaginary star system, ISS, will reach earth 500 years after the moment Robot A begins his journey.  Robot A arrives 500 years and one day after his departure, and is therefore 500 years and one day old.

How old is Robot B when Robot A arrives on earth?

*     *     *     *     *

There was a time I think I could have answered this relativity question.  I do not believe it is terribly difficult if you know the right equations.  Yet, this is not my real question.

I know Robot A will be travelling into the distant future as it speeds towards earth, as compared to Robot B back in ISS, and therefore, Robot B will be much older than Robot A.

My real question:  why do we believe the light travelling to earth from ISS, at a speed slightly faster than Robot A is not time travelling?

*     *     *     *     *

Why is this important?  I do not believe this relativity is taken into account with regards to our Universal calculations.  It is my impression that scientists currently just compute with regards to the light source (here ISS) having aged the same 500 years as the light which we see.

Consider.  If Robot B (and again, I have no idea with regards to the ballpark figure so I'll go high and low with examples) is 20,000 years old when Robot A reaches earth, ISS, too, has aged 20,000 years.  How much has the system changed or moved as compared to a computation which relies on ISS having only aged 500 years?  What if Robot B has ages 2,000,000,000 years?

*     *     *     *     *

Now consider a second system, SS2, half way between ISS and earth (though just askew by our view) which Robot A passes 250 years and 12 hours into his journey.  When Robot A reaches earth, the light from this second system has travelled 250 years, but has not the system aged nearly half of that which Robot B has aged?

If ISS is 2 million years removed from where we think it is, and SS2 is 1 million years different, how off can any calculations attempting to judge their mass or velocity be compared to calculations thinking only 250 and 500 years have passed?

This would mean that none of the stars we view are anywhere near where we think they are relative to each other.  Wouldn't this drastically alter current calculations?

*     *     *     *     *

Now, someone once tried to tell me light doesn't time travel.  I didn't understand his answer.  I still don't get how it is possible.  Wouldn't it mean ISS only ages drastically if something other than light travels away from it? 

But moreover, how the hell can we know if light does not time travel?

*     *     *     *     *

If someone with the knowledge happens to read this, do let me know why I am wrong.  It just doesn't make sense to me that Robot A and the extra day it takes him to travel to earth would make a difference.

And if I happened to ask a question that changes the way you physics folk compute the Universe, hurry up with my Nobel so I have something to leave my kid.

Sad and Spent but Still Seeking . . . Something

Thing have been, very difficult, this summer.  Subjectively, I believe, very much so, that I have made tremendous progress.

The have been So Much change, not only to limb positions and the muscles upon them, but also in my torso, organs shifting in my abdomen altering my lung capacity and rib position.

Pain has been constant and significant, but always shifting.  Sometimes, it's a diffuse discomfort.  Others, it is sharp and exquisite, as when a segment of muscle moves to a new position, ripping across ribs, or when my leg suddenly has slack after a hip alteration such that my knee dislocates as thigh and calf muscles slide and shift to make up the difference.

I am spent.

*     *     *     *     *

And yet, I see a light at the end of the tunnel.

I do not know if it is The Light of The Path,

Or a semi-truck with one headlight out barrelling towards me as I stand, eyes closed, about to become road kill.

Either way, in my current state of exhaustion, it would be salvation.

*     *     *     *     *

I believe I have been wrong about something, all this time.  More off the mark, than wrong, but still . . .

I have long characterized myself as "all Yin, no Yang" to express how one sided I am.  This was a subjective illusion, I have now come to believe.

It is very difficult to express, and the Yin-Yang concept still fits locally, per several muscle groups, but not in terms of their connections.  This, too, suggests why my unfolding has been so difficult.

I believe the injury of my youth pulled muscle systems into the creases, past the creases of limb joints.  Imagine a quadricep, still partially atop the thigh, but also stretching into and to the side of the hip, where ligament should be.  The result, over the course of my life, was to develop a walk which predominantly uses the wrong muscle groups at the wrong time. 

To lift my leg, I mainly flex the portion of quad in my hip.  This is rampant throughout.  Everything I do is wrong, backwards.  Or was, and so returns when I let down my concentration.

*     *     *     *     *

Dammit!  I had two topics in my head before wrapping up (the above and one more) and forgot the second while writing about my backwardsness.  Perhaps I should have gone second idea first, and my backwards nature would have let me recall them both.

Another day, perhaps.

M(R)I Tinnitus

Okay, weak title, but I wanted something better than What Happened During My MRI To Investigate My Tinnitus.  See, M(R)I > MI > My Tinnitus.  Ain't I clever?  Don't answer that.

*     *     *     *     *

So I had my MRI yesterday.  They did a close check around the left ear because I've been hearing my pulse in that ear for a very long time now (a Tinnitus), and they also did the every decade check for aneurysms, my third one now, which the smart guys at Stanfurd said I should do since they went tinkering in my fathers brain so many years ago.

*     *     *     *     *

Results we good.  Kinda.

No aneurysm issues.  Woohoo!

No evidence regarding the source of my Tinnitus, which is comforting in that there will be not cutting into my head, but also disconcerting as the pulse I hear is kinda driving batshit crazy sometimes.

*     *     *     *     *

Among the results,

"Paranasal Sinuses and Oto-mastoids: Small mucous tension cysts
of nodular mucosal thickening in the right sphenoid sinus."

This I have no idea what it means (not like I get what's next, either, of course), but since it may be relevent to being out of balance, I'm noting it, and

"AICA vascular loops appear to contact the seventh and eighth
nerve complexes near the ostium of the IACs, the contact surface
appears greater on the right compared to the left. This is of
unknown clinical significance. Recommend clinical correlation. " Again, no idea, and unless the contact area is inversely proportional to a sound transfer, which I doubt, this doesn't seem to be related to my LEFT ear hearing my pulse.  Again, though, may be related to the out of balance aspect of things. But here is the fun . . . The MRI itself. *     *     *     *     * I was not looking forward to this.  My hypermobility was going to make it difficult, and I knew it going in. I can't stay still.  It hurts.  If I relax, my limbs slowly let gravity sublux them, partially taking them out of their sockets. So, the idea of staying still for 40-60 minutes was almost laughable.  I figured if I got lucky and found the right position, I'd be able to use all my meditation techniques and get through it, possibly even without needing to stop and redo anything. *     *     *     *     * When I first sat on the table, I announced, "This isn't going to work." The portion you lay upon was thin, thinner than the width of my chest.  Both shoulder were over the edge, and were difficult to keep in place with full concentration. The nurse said, "We can put pillows under both of your arms."  This I thought could work, so we got started. So I was slide into the MRI.  Right off, I realized the machine itself, like a jigsaw puzzle, has a level equal to the sliding table, and as such I could rest my arms upon it, at least with a chance of success. The pillow strategy abandoned (and it would have been the opposite (too high and too much pressure, anyways), the MRI started. Not 3 minutes into it, the sliding portion of the table slid slightly, just enough to adjust the imaging system's aim at my head, I imagine.  Unfortunately, my arms resting on the non-sliding portion of the machine stayed in place while the rest of me moved. *     *     *     *     * Let me be clear.  I have a horrible time riding in a car.  If I relax at all, the slightest shift partially dislocates at least one limb. When at home watching TV, if my daughter gently puts any weight on me and I am not ready for it, I partially dislocate somewhere. If I am tensed, I can maintain a position.  Relaxed, and the slightest of bumps pulls me apart.  This, too, is why I am too fearful to share a swim lane at the pool.  One bump from a direction I am unprepared for, and I am in trouble. So, when the MRI slid no more than a quarter of an inch, it did so just when I had managed to maintain a position in a semi-relaxed state.  It dislocated both shoulders. I had 40 more minutes to maintain the position, and the machine shifted several more times. *     *     *     *     * I understand that I have a high pain tolerance, at least in some respects, and that my meditation can greatly elevate those levels I can deal with, but this was something new to me.  I almost lost it a few times, ready to grab the panic trigger and end the test, but I kept going.  Once, it was a Led Zeppelin song in the headphones that helped to calm me down. Anyways, the results were good, for the most part. Ten more years and I get to do it again.

The Core of the Matter

Suddenly, I am dancing around a potential adjustment in my core.

It is very much tied to my right shoulder, which then becomes a lynch pin for the rest of my body.  This is no surprise, given the childhood injury was the result of Dad dislocating the right arm, potentially tweaking things all the way down into my abdomen as the position I was in had been so compromised, pinned under the front of a car, license plate digging into my stomach.

When I manage to do a few things, none of which are easy, I'm getting some very significant changes in the right shoulder.  The focus is primarily on my core and hips.

It is also tied to the latest attempted change of leg positioning, having them pointed more inward whenever I remember.  It is clear, on top of everything, I stood with hyper extended legs forever.  This, when coupled with hypermobility, lends significant credibility to the idea that my situation sits on a far end of the Bell Curve.

My Ehlers-Danlos case is not severe (may potentially not even be Ehlers-Danlos, in truth), but the injury plus the posture problems resulted in this experience.  I do believe the hyper extended legs was a result of both hypermobility and the "tweak" in my abdomen.

So, time for more core work.

Once again, a swim stroke has changed ridiculously, this time my breast stroke.  I am too tired to write more at present, but felt I needed an update before things start to get really screwy. 

The tide is turning!

Turning A Corner?

After all this time, I know better than to get too excited over the latest revelation.  That said, I am fairly sure I am on to something good.

I've always known I relied too much on torque in my movements.  It was one of the very first realizations that lead me here, back when I first tried to stop being a toe-walker.

Yet, I had no idea.  The idea that I was all Yin, no Yang was always present.  I definitely could conceptualize it.  I thought I had felt it, too.  In fact, I am sure I did feel it.  I just never came close to feeling the extent of it.

*     *     *     *     *

How I came by this realization is a worthwhile post in an of itself, and perhaps I'll lay it out in detail some other time.  Yet, I must put a bit of it here.

I lost a friend this past week.  I won't pretend we were very close, but from our first few discussions over 3 years ago, he was one of a handful of people that could empathize with me.  He had it harder than myself, no doubt, but was always positive, very unlike myself.

Anyways, the day after his passing, very depressed, I went out for my bike + swim with the intention of channelling Scorchiebeanie (my friend's internet avatar) and really soaking in every bit of good that I could, the warmth of the sun, the feel of the water, etc.

In this meditative state while swimming, I had some big adjustments, which is nothing new.  Only this time, I felt them differently.  I felt how I could possibly maintain the position.  The best I can describe is that the connected arm could still swim, though not nearly as powerfully, yet much more relaxed.  There was a substantial lack of the reliance upon torque.

And while the daydream going on in my head during this meditation was very much centered upon my friend, with a very interesting, even possible, after life possibility included, I am content to say that even if his presence was not with me, helping me get towards the proper position of balance, his friendship was the source of the thoughts which coincided with it.

Thanks, Scorch.

*     *     *     *     *

To document a bit more, the change made it much clearer in my mind what I have been doing, and I will use examples from the pool to explain.

Take normal flutter kicks using a kick board.  Instead of just using my legs, and perhaps a bit of hips, I was maximizing torque with each kick, relying on muscles all the way up my back, and thereby not even really using my legs much.

An aside - this may too explain my near inability to pick up something heavy without using my back, because my back is pretty much all I used.  I do wonder if being SO out of balance made it difficult to experience normal issues of hernia concerns, which, presuming I begin to get things back towards balance, I will have to be very aware of in the future.

Another aspect would be my arms in front crawl.  I have often preferred using a pull buoy to just swimming, and as I noted in the past, I was very fast this way, too.

Now, I know why.  I used too much torque.  I leveraged a gigantic S-curve with each arm stroke.

*     *     *     *     *

Ultimately, this explains why I have always hurt so much during swims, runs, and exercise in general, with every move I've ever made, in truth.  Not only was my body out of balance, but I put pressure on the extremes of my mobility to leverage myself with each move.

This could also explain why I was able to dunk in high school while standing 5'9".  My toe-leaping was a product of excessive torque leverage.

*     *     *     *     *

A big question remaining is the extent to which my hypermobility lead to my relying on torque compared to the possibility that the repetitive nature of a body relying on torque lead to my hypermobility.

I'll inquire with my doctor this week regarding a genetic test for Ehlers-Danlos, but I imagine it will go on deaf ears (as well as my second request for a Disabled parking placard!).  The possibility, no matter how slim, remains that my symptoms of Ehlers-Danlos are correlational rather than causational.  It could be the childhood injury and subsequent reliance on torque created an out of balance body, and that being "out of balance" to such an extreme causes the symptoms I share with Ehler-Danlos.  Their symptoms, too, being the result of being "out of balance," but in their case the root cause is the genetic auto-immune disorder.

Regardless, genetic defect or not, I have little doubt that a new focus on eliminating the reliance upon torque will be a very good thing.

*     *     *     *     *

For starters, just a few days into the approach, I just (well, just when I sat down to start writing this)got home after doing over 3,000m in the pool.

I am usually aching quite a bit after a mere 1,600.  Instead, my muscles feel much more pumped from usage and my joints not nearly as sore from twice the work.

*     *     *     *     *

One last note - while in general, I was going slower than usual in the water, there were several moments where my form must have been much improved, such that I was still quite fast in the water, subjectively feeling like I exerted less force.

For my cool down, I even did a pair of very fast flutter kick 25m stints, not a full sprint, but with more force than I ever could before without really hurting my hips.  My kicking really has changed completely, making my feet feel much more like fins.

Time will tell, and then, I will, too.

Back in Action, kinda, sorta

The pool is back open for lap swim.  Horay me!

I road my new bike to the Rec Center and did 1,000m worth of submerged physical therapy.

It hurt.  I'm tired.

So, I get a mere 3 months of pool time.  Starting weight, 225 lbs.

I won't be running anymore, but the bike will at least get me out with a little excersice.  It won't, however, be the sweatfest in 100+ degrees that helped me lose water weight in years past.

Time to sleep and do it again tomorrow.