First Day of the New Year

Welcome 2011!

I hope everyone had a safe and relatively pain free New Year's Eve. My husband and I had a nice dinner and played some Yahtzee before retiring in front of the the TV. We made it until about 11:30pm (much later than I thought we would have). I had a few sips of wine with dinner - not wanting to cause any problems with my meds or my head. It was nice to at least enjoy a small taste. Despite having woke up with a headache I managed to remain migraine free for the day. All in all it was a pleasant and relaxing last day of the year.

The only thing missing was sweet potato pie but I'll make another one today. YUM!

The business of the new year is kind of exciting, in the way that preparing for the start of a new school semester used to feel. The new calendar gets marked up and displayed. A new database needs to be developed to track spending and income. And we need to suddenly adjust to seeing and writing 2011 instead of 2010.

I'm still evaluating myself for anxiety. The closer I look at the big picture my muscle tensions and chest discomfort and stress responses really do resemble anxiety as much as anything else. I can see how the smallest changes cause a physical response. I can be lying down watching TV thinking that I'm relaxed but when I pay attention I see that I'm actually engaging my neck muscles and often other muscles in my legs or arms. If I'm not completely focused on relaxing my muscles then they are tense. And any small thing that happens, like the dog barking will heighten that response, sometimes leading into the chest discomfort.

I'm finding that I really don't have much control over my body - far beyond the obvious lack of control over my migraines. I can't help but wonder if my lack of awareness means I should be on medication for this for a while. After all I can't possibly spend every moment and all my energy on relaxing my muscles. I would never get anything else done.

My progress in PT has been really slow. My therapist says that we are trying to strengthen the neck muscles and loosen the thoracic spine. Basically she stretches the spine and then I do neck exercises. It has made some difference in my hand and arm discomfort but I'm still having lots of pain in my neck/shoulder muscles along with frequent spasms. Basically I feel like I'm spinning my wheels at this point. I wonder if this is because we have not addressed whatever is going on in my brain - the stress or anxiety response.

Okay, at this point I'm just babbling.

Happy New Year everyone!