If you sit in front of computer all day with bad posture, this story can save you $500 or more in doctor and physical therapy bills. Learn what I have learned so you don’t have to have expensive physical therapy like I am having. If one or both of your arms hurt and you don’t know how you injured them, it might be the way you sit. Interestingly, your arms hurting can be caused by the muscles in your neck. Here’s the story so far:
Are workplace injuries real? I always thought they were a joke but was I wrong.
Learning how to make money from home on your computer is very popular in 2010 and it will probably continue to be so through 2011 if the number of real jobs don’t pick up. People want to take advantage of the Internet and that means sitting at home in front of your computer for hours on end.
If you are successful in any home business that requires you to work 100% of your time online, you are going to be logging in long hours sitting in a chair glued to your computer. At times I am online 10 or more hours a day and my posture has gotten worse and worse.
The Problem:
My back often hurts and gets sore as does my neck and I try to move around as much as possible but its hard. Then two months ago my left arm started hurting. Out of the blue, with absolutely no injury to it, my arm started aching and moving it certain directions hurt.
I thought nothing of it at first and attributed the pain to stress. Stress has been a big problem for me and it can attack different parts of my body. But usually the pain goes away and that’s how I know it is stress.
My arm pain didn’t go away though, and very gradually got worse. I went kayaking once which was a big mistake and my arm was really sore the next day. I also played golf a couple times but didn’t seem to notice the pain much or I wouldn’t have gone. But day after day, week after week, the pain slowly got worse.
Sleeping was the hard part as you use both arms when you adjust positions or turn over. I am a restless sleeper and I am constantly turning over and adjusting my position during the night. With my bad arm, sleeping was painful and I would often hurt it more during the night.
I didn’t want to go to the doctor because I thought it just needed rest and would heal on its own. Oh, I also didn’t want to go to the doctor because I am an idiot.
Instead, I would go for a day trying to hardly move my arm, pretending it was in a sling. That made it a little better and I got excited thinking all my arm needed was rest. But then I would hurt it again during the night or I would hurt it sometime during the day when I would forget for a split second that it was injured and make a move that was bad.
The last two weeks things continued to get worse and I finally realized I needed to go to the doctor because my arm was not getting better on it’s own. My doctor proceeded to send me to a physical therapist and the first visit was $189 out of my own pocket because my insurance doesn’t cover it.
The Answer:
So far though, that has been the best $189.00 I have ever spent. My arm is hurting, it turns out, because muscles in my NECK have turned off. My neck doesn’t hurt but it is the culprit. The way I sit all day resting on my arm and bending my neck has somehow shut off the muscles that keep my vertebrae in my neck tight and together when I move. Not being in the proper position and floating a little, these vertebrae are pinching the muscles on the left side of my neck and those muscles lead right down to my arm. So, the pinching of the muscles in my neck is leading to the pain in my arm.
It’s more complicated than that but that is the basics. I have a lot of appointments set up but already my arm feels much better with the exercises he has given me to do. The body is so complicated it is incredible it stays together like it does and works at all. I have a long way to go I fear as this is going to take a while to heal and get things back to normal.
If you have back pain, neck pain, arm pain and you sit in front of your computer for hours at a time, you need to be aware of the damage you might be doing. I am going to have to totally rearrange the way I sit and work on the computer and I am going to have to start doing upper body workouts to get stronger. My slumping over the computer has to stop and I really have no other option at this point.
11/18/2010 Update – This is really not going well for me as I made some good strides in the beginning and now have hit a wall. My arm movement has improved but my doctor and physical therapist do not know why I can’t progress beyond a certain point. The only thing left to do is get an MRI to see if something is really wrong (like a tear) and those are EXPENSIVE! I also don’t have insurance that will cover one and I understand they can run about $2,000.
I am trying to get better health insurance but I want to wait until the beginning of the new year so that if I have to pay $2,000 at least that will count towards my deductible for 2011. So far in physical therapy I have spent almost $800! I’m not a happy camper right now and I wish I knew more from the start so I could have avoided this silly injury. I’m still in pain everyday too.
