The Big 3-0 and Changes

I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write about this but maybe it is time to let it out. This year was a big change for me. 2023 started off great with the adoption of two kittens, then my concert deficiency was finally treated with tickets to see Rob Zombie touring with Alice Cooper along with Ministry, and Filter. The show is not until September but I’m still looking forward to it, especially Rob.

Then I got tickets to KISS for November which might be their last show in Toronto, ever. I thought the gig I went to in 2019 would be theirs and my last but clearly, I was wrong.

And of course, I took home my very first car which I named Motörizer after one of Motörhead’s later and underrated albums. While all those things are going well, there’s a personal side of me that hasn’t been going well.

Physical stress symptoms from my job and other everyday stressors have caught up to me. I suppose taking care of Motörizer has also added to the stress because of all the things I have been learning that come with owning and caring for a vehicle of my own.

At the end of March, I hurt my hand at work and it must have bruised the nerve and tendon in my thumb so it hurt to move it in certain directions. I remember when I was experiencing pain in my left knee last year, I went for physiotherapy to get it under control and was able to in time for my first trip overseas.

So I went back to physio for my hand and did the exercises twice a day. I had to temporarily give up some gaming and writing in order for it to heal. So most of my computer time was spent watching some TV shows. Eventually, my hand got better and I was discharged but it wasn’t long before a new problem arose which was not long after my 30th birthday which I took as a new beginning.

I also bought myself a new Secretlab ergonomic gaming chair for my 30th birthday and for the first time, I felt like I was forced to sit up straight when sitting in it. Perhaps I was slouching in my old chair all along and didn’t even know it. Now I don’t want to blame what I’m about to share entirely on my chair because I don’t think it’s the primary culprit here.

Just after my hand started to feel better, I began to feel muscle knots in the back of my neck, which I have experienced before after a stressful event but it would usually be gone in a few days or a week. But this one persisted. I started stretching religiously and a little too much because I felt like I had had enough aches and pains for one year and was desperate to get my stress level down since it skyrocketed while my hand was healing. Soon my neck began to loosen up but then I began to experience tightness in a muscle on the left side of my neck that felt like squeezing. It sometimes spread to my jaw and throat which made talking feel uncomfortable.

I originally didn’t want to go back to physio because I assumed this problem would go away on its own with some stretching and it never did. I originally believed it to be my SCM muscle but eventually with some persuasion, I went back to physio even though it had been only a couple of weeks since I had been discharged from my hand issue.

The PT I saw this time said that there was tightness in my left scalene muscles and gave me some stretches which I do three times a day. I also went to my doctor who believed that I had just strained something and encouraged me to go back to the physio. He also mentioned that it could also be from stress and posture.

I have never had the perfect posture but I have always tried to be mindful of it and it’s like I spontaneously picked this year to work on it and break the habit for good. It could also be the discomfort I have now is from trying even harder to correct my posture. Over the years, I’ve got better at keeping my back straight when standing and walking, now I’ve tried to keep my belly in and my head up, but the biggest problem I think is that my shoulders have always been rounded. Now that I’m trying to push them back, the muscles there are rebelling that they are not used to this and begin to hurt.

I’m not sure how that has impacted my left scalenes, but it could also be from excessive computer use since I tend to spend a large amount of time in front of Teletraan-1 on days off either gaming or writing. I will admit I fell into that on my days off since I started working 12-hour shifts at work and now I’m trying to bring back some balance into my personal time so my body can relax. But because I sometimes don’t have enough distractions I become even more stressed when the pain and stiffness don’t seem to improve even if I do the exercises religiously.

I have also been told by my PT that I have trigger points in my shoulders and the one in my left has become active so it often hurts when I bend my neck a certain way, especially if I am lying or sitting down. If I’m standing up or moving, it is almost nonexistent, but I still know it’s there because I can feel the little tightness in my left scalenes and the muscles are all connected.

I’ve been going to physio for five weeks now and I even had a dry needling treatment which increased my range of motion a little but the trigger point hasn’t truly been eliminated. Perhaps this pain is the most annoying I’ve had because it decided to start in a matter of days after the issue with my hand was resolved and it has me asking, will I ever be pain-free again, especially now that I’m 30?

I know that the body changes quite drastically once we hit the age of 30, my coworkers would joke that it’s the age where you slowly start to fall apart. I could probably be more physically active. I swim a lot in the summer, I take a walk every day that I have off, I have even recently taken up yoga as well, but that seems to be the only time I get relief from this.

Should I cut back on how often I sit at my computer? Sure, we all should, but not to an extreme measure where we don’t use our computers at all if some of our passions like gaming and blogging can only be done there. I want to find a way to keep gaming and writing, even with these challenges, unless it reaches a point where the pain and stiffness is so bad that it’s impossible to even sit there, which I highly doubt will happen.

It’s still vexing to deal with, I mean, when I go to sleep nowadays, I have resorted to sleeping on my back now because the left shoulder sometimes hurts to sleep on and when I wake up, it radiates down my arm. I may have to go for another dry needling session as some evidence shows it may take more than one to get full relief.

But even if and when this resolves, and it does slowly get better every day, (for instance, the scalene doesn’t get so tight that I have little headaches, nor does it feel like it goes into my jaw, and mostly it only hurts when I move it in a certain direction) this might be the new reality for me entering my 30s, there will be more aches and pains and the best thing I can do to manage them is to try to fit my passions into a lifestyle where my health is put first, like not writing for two hours straight on a fanfiction chapter, getting up every 20 min during a gaming session to stretch, watching my posture, etc.

I’ll still do everything in my power to keep gaming, updating this blog, and my work on Wattpad but I just may not be able to do those things excessively when I get some time off, while this problem still persists. One of my fellow blogger friends said they are dealing with chronic pain, some of it from an autoimmune disorder, and are finding ways to manage as well, and they’re about two years older than me.

I often ask myself how did this start? Age is certainly one factor, stress another, it could also be my posture, and my PT said those trigger points were there for a long time and I must have done something to wake up the one on the left. Trigger points can form and remain latent for years before they can be activated for whatever reason and start to cause problems. I’m not sure how this ties to the tight scalene though. But people, especially of older generations, are quick to blame computer usage, and while that might be one culprit for this common type of shoulder pain, it’s not the only cause.

My doctor also told me one thing I should never do is those neck rotations when I stretch, and maybe I did some of those but I stopped once he told me to. Still, I may never know what truly caused this, it’s just annoying to deal with when I’m trying to go about my day and have this discomfort.

That has been what my spring and summer have been like and I wish that it would die down, I was hoping 2023 would be my year and now I guess it won’t be.

👽Emily