You may recall that Farmer H has an affliction that I call his PopArm. Like Popeye for the name, but because he tore his bicep, and heard a pop. His arm is still inflated in the area, looking quite muscular, though in reality his injury is unrepairable because he didn't get to the doctor and have surgery (that has a questionable success rate) within three days to stitch him back together. It doesn't hurt him any more, but he is, as you might imagine, weaker in that arm.
Farmer H originally hurt his arm lifting a set of dresser drawers into the back of his Ford F250. That was back when he was working with his original bargain 18 storage units full of junk. He said he hurt the arm (his right bicep) while lifting, but it wasn't until later that he felt the POP. That he was on the toilet, reaching around to wipe his butt, when he heard the POP.
Saturday morning (and by that I mean 2:20 p.m.), I was getting dressed after my shower, preparing for a trip to town. I happened to be sitting on the toilet, and noticed that my toes were still wet with droplets of shower water, having not dwelt upon them when toweling off. I took a square of toilet paper in each hand, and leaned over to blot away the moisture. As I was reaching back with my left arm to deposit the toe-blotters into the wastebasket, I felt a sudden pain in my left bicep area!
"OH NO! I HOPE I DON'T HAVE THE POPARM!"
I do that when Farmer H is gone to his Storage Unit Store and I know I'm alone in the house. Talk to myself.
Sweet Gummi Mary, that hurt! I didn't hear a POP. So there's that. The best I can determine, mine is not the bicep. Nor does it appear to be the deltoids. My injury seems to be the muscle between the bicep and the deltoids. Not on the front of my hanging arm. Not on the side. But about 3/4. Does that make sense?
Let's explain it a different way. I know my readership is old enough to remember clocks. So if my hanging left arm has the bicep at 12:00, and the deltoids at 9:00, my injured muscle is at 10:30. It doesn't throb. It doesn't hurt with every movement. Only with some. I guess it's whenever that muscle is isolated, doing motion the bicep and deltoids don't do.
Uh huh. Mrs. HM. She doesn't hurt her arm lifting. She doesn't hurt her arm getting into Farmer H's new truck, SilverRedO. She hurts her arm reaching back to put two squares of toilet paper in the wastebasket.
I used to hurt my arm in a similar area by reaching upwards and backwards to ding the stop bell on the bus, now I get up and step over to reach that bell, without hurting myself because I got sick of having the arm out of action for a day or two.
ReplyDeleteThe other thing I do, is when I'm in the same position Farmer H was, sometimes I'll reach around, and hear my back pop, and FEEL it too! and I know it's going to take me a good half hour just to get my pants up again and hobble to the kitchen for a hot water bottle to sit with to ease the pain.
River,
ReplyDeleteMy arm IS better now, so it's not the dreaded PopArm! It was apparently a muscle that I use to pull up my pants. I'm glad to be healed. A back is nothing to trifle with. That will probably be the next thing to go.
Who knew you could injure yourself just by wiping your butt!!
ReplyDeleteKathy,
ReplyDeleteOr by wiping your toes!