New Love and Other Woes
It has been awhile since I have posted anything and that is because work and life have been keeping me super busy. That said, I would like to share my new love with you. It is a pipe (although I’m not sure how much I will be smoking it for the time being for reasons I will explain later). This pipe was handmade by Erik Nording and actually hand selected by the owner of the tobacconist I go to from Erik Nording’s house in Denmark. It is beautiful and has smoked beautifully since day one. Sadly, I have only smoked it three times since I got it (April 13).
I am going to be holding off on the smoking for the time being, until I get my possible compressed ulnar nerve looked at. You have probably heard of carpal tunnel which is the compression of the median nerve due to overuse. This is similar, only involving a different nerve. You can damage this nerve quite easily by hitting your funny bone a few too many time as it is an exposed nerve. What does this feel like? Well, I have pretty much constant tingling in my pinky and ring fingers and sometimes my whole arm, but mostly just the elbow will be really sore and achy. My job, with its super repetitive upper body work, aggravates it further. It first noticed it at the end of August when I was using my arms a lot for moving. I smoked one cigarette and the symptoms increased and I thought nothing of it. I actually thought it was because the cigarette was stale. During the next few months, I hardly did any upper body work so symptoms disappeared for a bit. Then I started spending long days looking for jobs on the internet and the symptoms started to return in the form of my whole arm being sore. I sought out massage therapy, which does help. Work seems to be aggravating it further. Sadly, smoking my pipe seems to make the symptoms worse as well.
I first I thought I was crazy that the tingling and discomfort would increase post smoking my pipe, but there it was. While I somewhat take pleasure in pain, this is not the kind I like or find enjoyable. So now I have to find a family doctor since I don’t have one and get them to look at it. In the interest of experiencing less discomfort I will be putting a hold on the pipe smoking for the moment. This makes me sad, but I have to figure out what is wrong before I continue. I had a job interview today that went well, so hopefully I will only be doing my repetitive motion job for a few more months. If I can never pipe smoke again, my boyfriend is pleased because he says he’ll have a new pipe. To this, I glared at him and pouted. Hopefully it all works out in the end.
My New Love
Sorry to hear about your painful condition – I would have never imagined that it could be exacerbated by smoking! Be sure & tell the doc that when you go – maybe he or she will have another suggestion besides the “don’t smoke” advice you’re sure to get. Good luck!
Definitely sad to hear about the physical woes. While I know of plenty of stretching exercises for the carpal tunnel issue and other things in that bodily area, I don’t know of anything for the ulnar/cubital tunnel stuff.
Thanks for the concern! I didn’t think it could, but it apparently worsens symptoms of carpal tunnel due to decreased blood flow. Since what I think I have is so similar to carpal tunnel it would make sense that decreased blood flow might affect it in the same way. I want to look into it further because I like to find good sources of info to back that up but it does make logical sense. I want to have my self-diagnosis either confirmed or rejected by a doctor before I do anything. Right now it sucks, because I really wanted to start swimming again, but I’m not sure if that would make things better or worse. The lack of being able to physical things I once did and enjoyed bothers me more than not being able to smoke.
Yeah, swimming, being all about repetitive motion, might not be a keen idea at the moment.
As far as the smoking goes, clearly, you have only one option: drink.
Pit the vasodilator against the vasoconstrictor.
I’m mostly kidding, of course, but it might be worth a try if you happened to be in the mood for both activities some night, though if you did, you’d probably want to do so when your discomfort is at a milder level.
Haha… I have smoked on nights when my elbow feels better and it does help. Alcohol helps too, but my motivation for not smoking until I get it checked out is more since the problem is not life threatening, I need extra motivation to go get it looked at.
Cool. Any motivation to get a person’s limbs and such working right is aces in my book. Just lock up that new pipe of yours so you beau doesn’t go and swipe it.
Thinking of your new smoking medium of choice as I wrote this weekend’s new fiction…I hope I have done the pipe community proud (or at least not embarrassed myself).
Oh that sucks! (to quote my teenage stage friend)
That is such a lovely pipe.
It’s funny but when I come here – I start to understand my fathers pipe collection. I am just not sure what to do with it now that he is gone. *sigh*
Hope things work out for you.
That IS a lovely pipe.