Yellow Light...
posted: 03/27/07

Sigh.

I was to begin the recording of my third album today. Unfortunately my body has other ideas.

Half a decade or so ago I injured my rotator cuff while ice climbing. Every year since there's been a brief but painful episode where the old tear would flare up. I've taken various doses of this and that to cope. Usually the pain would subside and I'd regain use of my arm within the week.

Last Thursday I was sitting in my studio doing some level-setting and I felt a familiar and most unwelcome twinge in my left shoulder. Over the course of the next half hour the pain doubled, then tripled. That night I lay awake for the duration, cursing and thrashing, trotting out the heating pad and the naproxen. The pain was at 11. It continued all day and night on Friday. Through the weekend I continued to medicate and immobilize, as best I could, the wing.

Cooking is a comedy and potential three-alarm blaze. Chopping veggies is, simply, extrêmement dangereux. Hand-washing cutting boards post-meal prep is an exercise in patience and balance. Showering and subsequent towel-drying is agony. T-shirts are banned - there must be buttons down the front - or we go native. Everything takes two to three times as long as it would with, well, two arms. The neighbors surely think someone is being dismembered in here - very, very slowly - what with the cries of anguish I continually belt at the walls.

It's probably obvious, but playing guitar is out of the question.

I am exceedingly depressed. This kinda feels like The Big One. Evidently joints just sorta wear out. Shouldn't they be made a little more sturdy? I see a doc on Tuesday.

I hold out hope for a quick recovery (without surgery and the requisite 12 weeks of immobilization and the long road of rehab that typically accompany it), perhaps aided by pharmaceuticals, and I'd love to get back in the studio, STAT. But the fact is that I'm probably going to have to lay off playing for at least a week, and I know I need better preparation for recording than that. It's a major bummer, because things were finally coming together with the new stuff.

So we'll see.

Oh well. There's still the podcast, for those in need of chatter. It's about all I'm good for at the moment. Maybe I'll try to do another one while I convalesce.

Play the podcast.
Get it: on iTunes |
Huh? Wazza? Help!

I typed this with one hand. And I even did caps. It sucked.

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