Back to shoulder rehab

I slacked off of my home shoulder rehab program after I received a cortisone injection in May because it began to feel so good that I figured that I was pretty much on the road to recovery and would not really need to do all that hard work anymore. Well, the cortisone has worn off and the pain is back with a vengeance and I tried to go back to my home regimen after returning from three weeks of vacation. I did precisely as my physical therapist instructed me to do, up the number of repetitions on resistance bands and weights each week, but a few weeks ago, I may have overdone it, so I quit my home rehab program to allow my shoulder to rest up a bit. I decided, however, that I'd better return to it because I have been feeling a loss of range of motion again as well as some pain creeping back in to it, and the stretching exercises that I did today did not feel so good. It hurt, it really hurt, but I did them anyway. I went back to doing three sets of ten reps on both the bands and the weights and that felt good. I think that doing any more than that amount is too much right now. I just don't have the strength to go much more than that at the moment. So I am going to stay with that number and maybe go back to talk to my therapist and see what he has to say about all of this. Needless to say, after six months of this stuff, I am rather tired of it. This is a maddeningly slow injury to heal and I wish that it would just go away and stop hurting so much. But I guess that is the nature of shoulders, they just take a long while to heal.

Tomorrow (or actually, in about 12 hours, since it's close to 1:30 a.m. as I write this) I see my eye doctor to get my lenses strengthened. I have a very bad habit of going 3 - 5 years between eye appointments. I am at an age now where I can no longer do that and must go every single year. Fortunately, the vision insurance that I got when I retired means no co-pay for the exam or the lenses. My old insurance asked us to pay up front for all of that stuff and then we had to submit our claim and then wait for a reimbursement check to come. They were always very quick about it and that's nice, but given that I have new insurance, I will probably have to arrive at the doctor's office about a half hour or more in advance because they always make patients fill out these long pages of forms to fill out, usually about a dozen or so pages long, usually tons of stuff regarding HIPAA stuff, medical history, insurance information, contact info, etc. It's quite ridiculous as we are transitioning to electronic medical records that these things still need to be done, but such is the case. I'm fully prepared to be writing a small book in the way of forms to fill out when I arrive at the optometrist office in the afternoon. I know that my lenses need a major upgrade of strengthening, I can feel it. I am getting ferocious headaches from eye strain and since I now have to wear my glasses to drive, I am struggling to do so especially at night. I can't see things as well as I would like and I can't see signs as far away as I should be able to. I'm squinting a lot more than I should and it's tiresome. I can't see at all out of my middle trifocal and I have to use the bottom one a lot, requiring me to crane my neck to do so, which is causing me to deal with neck and back pain a lot. So this MUST be done without delay because it is causing me serious problems that I can no longer ignore. I can't see things well, I can't feel comfortable driving in both unfamiliar areas and at night and my neck, back and head hurt from straining to see. I'm so looking forward to having new lenses in my vintage gold rim glasses (they look like the ones above). It will be so nice to have stronger lenses and to be able to see again! I hope that the wait for my new lenses is not too long. My eyes are tired of straining to see out of these now too weak lenses.