2002-06-28 - 1:18 p.m.
I must be getting old.

Ugh. You know, when I started this "get healthy" plan, I really didn't take into consideration the compound effects of reduced sugar and increased exercise. Less energy and more sleep time needed! I overslept a little today, I have zero energy, and my lower legs are pretty sore.

Still, sore is good, right? Except for my left elbow. That's not so much fun; it aches today, and it's not supposed to. It's an old injury -- I almost ruined it when I was twelve. I slipped on a wet concrete floor when crossing it barefoot and almost all my weight came down on that one elbow. It hurt, and I immediately got pale and nauseous and dizzy, and I ran crying to my parents.

Dad, of course, has very little tolerance for whining. I've come to appreciate that as an adult, but as a child, it was rather daunting to be told that it couldn't possibly be as bad as I was making it out to be. Then he tried to force my elbow to bend, I guess to prove it to me, and found out the hard way that it really *was* seriously injured. I had maybe 30 degrees range of motion -- the elbow wouldn't bend up past the point where my forearm was at right angles to my upper arm, and it wouldn't bend downward anywhere near straight. Ow, ow, ow. After some screaming from me, he decided, Yup, locked elbows are bad news, and took me to the emergency room.

Luckily for me, the joint hadn't broken, or gotten bone chips wedged in it, or any of the other nasty things the doctors suspected. No, I had just thoroughly screwed up the tendons. They gave me a nice Ace wrap bandage and said to wear it for a couple of weeks, after which I should be mostly OK.

During those two weeks, I started developing a small degree of ambidexterity to cope. I'll never be able to write properly with my left hand, but being forced to carry all my books and other heavy stuff with my right arm made me start doing a lot of other things with my off hand, like unlocking doors, and other small tasks. I even started carrying my purse on the wrong shoulder. It became a habit, one that continues to this day.

All of which is to say, I never really put much stress on my left elbow after that. So until yesterday I had no idea that it still wasn't really healed. I took a pair of little 2-lb handweights with me when I went on my powerwalk. A properly done powerwalk involves lots of swinging of the arms, and of course the elbow is involved. By the time I was halfway done that elbow was popping, and aching, and threatening to seize up the way it used to in those first few months after the injury.

So today at lunch I'm going by the store, and an Ace elbow bandage will be joining my workout wardrobe. I'm sure it'll look funny, but probably not more so than the wrist bandage I have to wear when I'm typing a lot. I really hate to think of what I'll be like when I'm sixty -- limited mobility, arthritis out the wazoo, I imagine. Eeeeek.