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Be More Careful As You Age Into Geezerdom

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
So last year I tripped over a tomato cage. (I don't blame tomatoes.)
Landed hard on concrete on my right shoulder.
My shoulder had improved to the point I could lift that arm overhead.
Today....bang! Slipped on some ice hidden under snow.
Hard to use a mouse. Switching to touchpad.
Me heal more slowly now.
Must be more careful.
At least I'd given up snowboarding.

Who else is becoming more fragile?
 

Windwalker

Veteran Member
Premium Member
I use a walking stick when I walk outside on the snow and ice. Just added these to my necessities too: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0094GO6ZG/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I keep myself in shape in my older years through Tai Chi practice, walking, bike riding and swimming weather permitting. Keeps me flexible and in good health. But I always carry that stick with me. Not just good for that extra point of balance to catch yourself if you slip, but great for defending yourself like a ninja against angry squirrels, and whatnot.
 

Vinayaka

devotee
Premium Member
So last year I tripped over a tomato cage. (I don't blame tomatoes.)
Landed hard on concrete on my right shoulder.
My shoulder had improved to the point I could lift that arm overhead.
Today....bang! Slipped on some ice hidden under snow.
Hard to use a mouse. Switching to touchpad.
Me heal more slowly now.
Must be more careful.
At least I'd given up snowboarding.

Who else is becoming more fragile?

What used to be two weeks is now two months. Last winter I slipped on ice shovelling snow. It was 10 days before I could walk even half comfortably. I have several other athletic injuries. Some are permanent.

Don't whine too much at the Missus.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
What used to be two weeks is now two months. Last winter I slipped on ice shovelling snow. It was 10 days before I could walk even half comfortably. I have several other athletic injuries. Some are permanent.

Don't whine too much at the Missus.
No need.
She was appropriately appalled.
 

ChristineM

"Be strong", I whispered to my coffee.
Premium Member
So last year I tripped over a tomato cage. (I don't blame tomatoes.)
Landed hard on concrete on my right shoulder.
My shoulder had improved to the point I could lift that arm overhead.
Today....bang! Slipped on some ice hidden under snow.
Hard to use a mouse. Switching to touchpad.
Me heal more slowly now.
Must be more careful.
At least I'd given up snowboarding.

Who else is becoming more fragile?


Ive got years to go before i catch up to you but im noticing a slow lengthening in my recouperation periods. As a kid running wild on a farm and being somewhat gawky and clumsy i was for ever covered in lumps and bumps and being stitched up at hospital. Then limping out to play right away. Even broken bones and bomb explosions were sorted in a few weeks.

A couple of years ago i tripped and slammed into a wall with my arm outstretched and wrenching my left shoulder. It seemed to take an age to become useable again. Dropping a log on my knee had me limping and using a stick for almost a month. In the last 18 months I've had 2 stomach operations that i am not fully recovered from.

Age is a bind then it kills you

Hope your troubles are soon over
 

Subduction Zone

Veteran Member
So last year I tripped over a tomato cage. (I don't blame tomatoes.)
Landed hard on concrete on my right shoulder.
My shoulder had improved to the point I could lift that arm overhead.
Today....bang! Slipped on some ice hidden under snow.
Hard to use a mouse. Switching to touchpad.
Me heal more slowly now.
Must be more careful.
At least I'd given up snowboarding.

Who else is becoming more fragile?
I have not noticed that I am more fragile, but I have found that the ground is much further away when I bend down to pick something up.

I thought that I was done growing a long time ago.
 

Evangelicalhumanist

"Truth" isn't a thing...
Premium Member
So last year I tripped over a tomato cage. (I don't blame tomatoes.)
Landed hard on concrete on my right shoulder.
My shoulder had improved to the point I could lift that arm overhead.
Today....bang! Slipped on some ice hidden under snow.
Hard to use a mouse. Switching to touchpad.
Me heal more slowly now.
Must be more careful.
At least I'd given up snowboarding.

Who else is becoming more fragile?
Oh, dear, trust me -- increasingly fragility is something of a bugbear to me, too. And I do believe I'm older than you! A few years ago, we had a terrible ice storm in Toronto, some little time after I had spine surgery (laminectomy on L2-3-4), but me being me, insisted on going out for my constitutional. Well, of course my feet went out from under me and I landed flat on my back. I'll tell you, I was terrified -- but guess what, I managed to stand up again, and slither back home, tail between my legs, finally agreeing that there are still a few things more important than me getting my exercise.
 

Quetzal

A little to the left and slightly out of focus.
Premium Member
So last year I tripped over a tomato cage. (I don't blame tomatoes.)
Landed hard on concrete on my right shoulder.
My shoulder had improved to the point I could lift that arm overhead.
Today....bang! Slipped on some ice hidden under snow.
Hard to use a mouse. Switching to touchpad.
Me heal more slowly now.
Must be more careful.
At least I'd given up snowboarding.

Who else is becoming more fragile?
Hope you feel better soon! I hate it when the ice jumps out like that.
 

wandering peacefully

Which way to the woods?
So last year I tripped over a tomato cage. (I don't blame tomatoes.)
Landed hard on concrete on my right shoulder.
My shoulder had improved to the point I could lift that arm overhead.
Today....bang! Slipped on some ice hidden under snow.
Hard to use a mouse. Switching to touchpad.
Me heal more slowly now.
Must be more careful.
At least I'd given up snowboarding.

Who else is becoming more fragile?
I poked myself in the eye with a twig yesterday as I was blazing trails on the back 300. I was thinking I would have to go home and leave my work because it hurt so bad. Then gently reaching to my eye to feel for damage, there actually WAS a twig stuck in the corner of my eye! Luckily I just took it out, blinked a few times and was fine to carry on. Getting older does take more being careful. Grrr.
 

Revoltingest

Pragmatic Libertarian
Premium Member
I poked myself in the eye with a twig yesterday as I was blazing trails on the back 300. I was thinking I would have to go home and leave my work because it hurt so bad. Then gently reaching to my eye to feel for damage, there actually WAS a twig stuck in the corner of my eye! Luckily I just took it out, blinked a few times and was fine to carry on. Getting older does take more being careful. Grrr.
You're lucky.
I hate eye injuries most of all.
 

SigurdReginson

Grēne Mann
Premium Member
I broke and fractured several bones in my arm a few years back, and tore major ligaments to boot... Thanks to an especially skilled surgeon, he was able to repair the damage I did within an incision on my elbow about two inches long. I have no idea how he did it... I have metal in my arm now, though. My range of motion is between 90-95% of what it was before, and I've been able to work on strength training, so I'm a happy guy!

Ofcourse, before that I used to brag about never having broken a bone in my body... Shoulda knocked on wood that day. I guess I did... with my body while I was falling and jacking my arm up! :D
 

wandering peacefully

Which way to the woods?
You're lucky.
I hate eye injuries most of all.
Yep. I had a rock fly into my car window a few years back and ended up with cellulitis in my eyeball. Had I not insisted on not leaving the quick care until they gave me intravenous antibiotics, I would have been dead for sure. They tried to send me off with pills. I said no way! Eye injuries are the scariest I reckon.
 

Brickjectivity

Turned to Stone. Now I stretch daily.
Staff member
Premium Member
Yep. I had a rock fly into my car window a few years back and ended up with cellulitis in my eyeball. Had I not insisted on not leaving the quick care until they gave me intravenous antibiotics, I would have been dead for sure. They tried to send me off with pills. I said no way! Eye injuries are the scariest I reckon.
Quick care places treat a lot of people who want the sheerest minimum of care to save on cost. Probably that was why. They were trying to be reasonable about the cost. When I go to a quick care I go for whatever is cheapest, and if I die, I die.
 

icehorse

......unaffiliated...... anti-dogmatist
Premium Member
Copied from a recent thread, I offered:

A lot of pain science is VERY new, and agreed, a lot of doctors aren't current. Here's a really short course (obviously simplified), that could be useful:

- there aren't really "pain" receptors in our body. There are receptors that report on heat, cold, and various kinds of pressure or stretching. Those receptors send data to the brain and the brain, based on that data and on all of its experience, and the context "decides" whether or not to create pain signals.

- one of the brain's top priorities is to keep your body safe. and it's VERY conservative (seems like a good approach). For example, the brain is good at predicting whether a situation might end with rapid deceleration (like jumping from a high place), and tends to avoid such activities.

- when the brain decides you've been injured, one of its chief strategies is to put the injured area into "lock down". So if you hurt your wrist or ankle or whatever, the brain will send pain signals if you try to move the injured tissue. Again, a good strategy to promote healing.

- But there is a sort of "brain bug"... when everything is functioning well in your body, the brain and body have a strong, richly detailed "proprioceptive map". In other words, the brain gets a steady steam of detailed feedback from all over the body, and that makes the brain feel confident. But when you lock down a part of the body for even a short time, the communication channel gets fuzzy and the data not so reliable. This weakened comm. channel makes the brain concerned, and one of its strategies is to further "lock down" that spot in your body. So one side effect of locking down a body part to promote healing is that the brain-body communications get weakened. Now we're into a negative feedback loop.

So a very common occurrence is that months and years after damaged tissue has healed, the brain is still keeping that tissue in lockdown, just to be safe.

PRACTICAL STRATEGY: As soon as your doctor says it's safe to, you want to start doing movement exploration exercises with the healing tissue. The more pain-free movement exploration you can do with the healing tissue, the sooner your brain will regain confidence and relax its lockdown, and reduce its pain messages.

AMAZING FACT: The correlation between pain and tissue damage is surprisingly weak!!!! This is really not intuitive and you have to let that idea rattle around in your mind for a while. In one study, a large collection of the world's best spinal surgeons were given a large collection of spinal x-rays. As a group, these top doctors were completely UNABLE TO PREDICT which patients were in pain and which were not. Healthy looking spines were crippling some patients and seemingly damaged spines were not hindering others.

ANOTHER PRACTICAL STRATEGY: If your doctor approves, you should be doing controlled articular rotations (CARs), every day. These "stretching on steroids" exercises will help you maintain a strong, detailed mind-body map and will also allow your brain to relax any of the lockdowns it is maintaining that you might not be aware of.

ANOTHER CRITICAL FACT: As time passes, the field of biomechanics is suffering from a lot of valid criticism. Top performers in ALL fields DO NOT repeat bio-mechanically "perfect" movements. Individuals who take this approach are far more likely to suffer from repetitive motion injuries. So the best blacksmiths, and dart throwers and tennis players and on an on, DO NOT exhibit perfect, repeating form. In fact every iteration of their movements is different than that last.

IT'S A SYSTEM: Another idea that's appropriately losing steam is that disfunction of some tissue is a problem with that tissue. Sometimes yes, very frequently NO. If your ankle is stiff and sore, it could be because you have poor hip mobility. Many cutting edge PTs have a sort of running joke "guess the actual culprit". Your whole movement system is A SYSTEM. For example, if you have lower back pain, it's quite likely that your lower back is just fine, but it's being stressed out because some other part of your system is out of whack! And the current thinking is that we cannot know for sure what's out of whack, so the best strategy is to make sure the whole system is as healthy and mobile as possible. So for example, more mobile ankles might cure lower back pain, more mobile shoulders might cure lower back pain, and so on.

Again, check with your doctor, but doing those CARs every day can cure a surprising amount of pain...
 
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