Last night I dreamt that I was sitting at an outdoor concert. Jenna and I had been having a conversation about what to do about my shoulder pain. Mel and Joe were sitting behind me. Joey was trying to bug me by leaning into me with his elbow, and it was digging right into "the spot" on my back--and I was screaming. A notable dream for two reasons: first, my subconsious has somehow learned to scream. I have never in my life screamed, I don't even think I know how. If someone held a gun to my head and said, "Scream or die!" I'm not sure I would be able to figure out the mechanics of screaming quickly enough to prevent my demise; second, the level of pain I've been dealing with seems to have ratcheted up just a notch lately, so much so that I dream about the trouble spots. One of the questions the doctors always ask is "does the pain keep you awake?" and I'm wondering why that even matters if you're going to wake up exhausted from feeling the pain through your sleep, anyway.

So, apparently the point my mind is trying to make is that I need to do something about it all. Well, I am doing something, I see my favorite orthopedic surgeon next week about my shoulders. And my family doctor has referred me to an acupuncturist as sort of a last resort before surgery. If she can do anything at all to make my hand functional, I might let her have at the rest of my body and see if she can fix it. It's just so tiring, and maybe even overwhelming at times. I have to make bargains with myself: okay, you can play the drums for awhile, but I don't want to hear any whining later, and you can't spend any time at the computer this evening. Yeah, you can go skating, but you have to promise me you'll sleep in your splints and not take them off half way through the night. You can keep doing taekwondo, but only if you give up hockey and promise not to go barefoot anywhere else. I even make myself splint bargains: if you sleep in your hand splint, you can forget the feet splints tonight. If you sleep in only one foot splint (less stress on the back that way), you have to also wear the hand splint. If you don't sleep in either, you don't get to type out self-indulgent whines.