Lap Time

Hi,

There have been some ups and downs since my last post.  I will start with the "Ups."

The title of this blog post refers to the playlist title I use on my new Water-fi that I got for Christmas that I use when swimming my laps.  A Water-fi is an Apple iPod Shuffle that has been water-proofed by another company.  It clips to my swim goggles and comes with water-proof headphones.  It makes swimming laps much more enjoyable and the times melts away into listening to fun, upbeat songs.  Yesterday I hit a new high of 16 laps.  I started out at 8 laps in December.  I have also added a functional backstroke so my list of accomplishments.  My arms can't quite go straight back but it works.  My goal is to do the crawl again.  Swimming really helps my arm range of motion and hope  it continues to help my recovery.  I am very out of shape after the past year and need to get stronger and healthier again.

Now the "Downs."  In late December the doctors decided to try me on a new medicine to help with my neuropathy symptoms (the nerve pain and troublesome itching in my right arm). I have not been able to wear a sleeve on my right arm without great discomfort and with winter here I get pretty cold!  The new drug Lyrica was started.  It was a process: gradually weaning off the old drug (neurontin) and gradually starting up the Lyrica.  Once on Lyrica for a while I noticed that although the nerve pain was better, the itching was worse, it was making me feel very depressed and I was starting to have balance problems.  Not a good thing.  It was decided I would go back to Neurontin.  So, that meant gradually weaning off of the Lyrica and gradually starting up the Neurontin.  Here we go again.  But that didn't go very smoothly.  I started having withdrawal symptoms ( which can happen with this drug).  I experienced terrible migraine-like headaches that didn't respond to pain killer, nausea, insomnia and upset stomach.  But as of yesterday I am feeling much better and think I may be finally past it.

We had a nice holiday in Michigan.  I was not able to go cross country skiing as I had hoped.  I did not think my neck was quite ready for that kind of exercise yet.  I will have to wait for next year.  The kids tried snow boarding for the first time though and had a lot of fun.  I don't think I will be trying that!