Decided to
kill some time a few days ago by playing some guitar. I have very vague memories of a time when I
used to enjoy playing guitar; never was any good, although I have clocked in
over 1,000 hours playing “Rocksmith” on my computer. I suppose that must translate to me enjoying
the process somewhat. Now I’m sitting
here with my upper left arm and shoulder in constant pain. That, you see, is just the way life works for
me these days. Nothing ever has any
positive results – nothing. Everything I
do just adds more to the pile of shit that my life has become.
The thing
is, I don’t get it. This is not the
first time I’ve had debilitating pain that I’ve been able to trace back to
playing guitar; however, the specifics of the sessions that caused the pain are
anything but identical. Hell, the pain
wasn’t even in the same arm. It’s kind
of like life’s telling me that even if I somehow discover something that I
might enjoy it’s not going to let that happen. Nope … if it somehow doesn’t end in
soul-crushing disappointment, it’s not something that I’ll be allowed to do…
The first
time that playing guitar fucked me over was about 3½ years ago when I was
living in Nevada. On that occasion, it
was triggered by playing my acoustic guitar on my sofa. The result of this – for some reason – was
that my right arm became sore early the next day with the pain slowly
increasing for a couple days until I was unable to use the arm for anything. I ended up going to a local doctor. Got X-rayed, diagnosed with severe bursitis
and prescribed a couple of drugs – one for the swelling (that I don’t remember
having) and one for the pain. My parents
even flew down to help me although they didn’t arrive for a few days and the
issue had pretty much resolved itself by then.
I still don’t know what the true issue was as I’ve played my acoustic
many times since without incident; all I know was that it was very painful and
ended up causing grief to my poor parents as well as me. What I didn’t know was that, although the
circumstances vary, this was going to become somewhat of a recurring issue.
According to
what I’ve been able to decipher by searching my past postings on Facebook, the
next time something similar happened was about a year later. I was neither sitting on my sofa nor playing
my acoustic guitar; however, the results were hauntingly familiar. This time I was standing and playing the bass
I recently acquired. Upon waking the
next morning, the pain began and consistently increased until my arm was useless. Interestingly enough, it was my left arm this
time – different arm, same bullshit.
Didn’t bother jumping through the hurdles required to see a doctor this
time, though … just decided to wait out the pain. For you see, being that this was after making
my bone-head decision to become a professional poker player, I no longer had
good medical insurance; that’s just the way it is in this capitalistic country
– if you’re not either rich or in a current process of trying to become rich,
you’re not worth keeping alive. I was
relying on the bronze-level, bullshit health insurance I had obtained through healthcare.gov. This makes actually seeing doctors
for any non-emergency, life-threatening purposes as difficult and expensive as
they can legally get away with. No sense
making things worse by actually attempting to obtain any medical help. When I did bother with this the last time,
they pretty much proved to be quite useless when all was said and done…
As mentioned
above, I have once again started this deja vu … three days ago. This latest run-in began with me playing my
Les Paul whilst standing for somewhere between an hour and a half to two
hours. The exact amount of time is
unknown, although I do know I completed a 90-minute non-stop, random selection
of songs as a single set followed by playing a couple songs that I selected
afterwards. The pain – my left
arm/shoulder this time, same as the last one – started to arrive a couple days
ago and has been, as before, consistently increasing in severity since. So, as I stated at the start of this article,
I am now sitting with constant pain.
What all
this means now is that I apparently can no longer play my guitars unless I’m
willing to risk losing the functionality of an arm (or even worse, possibly
both arms) for a number of days afterwards … not to mention having to deal with
the pain that is also associated with this. So, it now looks like I won’t be playing my
guitars to kill time. One more joy gone…
It’s getting
to where everything seems to be pointless.
I’m trying to land a job (pathetic as that process seems to be going…) so
that I can once again be a contributing member of society; however, I’m having
a harder and harder time explaining why I’m even bothering. It’s gotten to the point where I actually don’t
want to do anything. That can’t be
healthy…
bis später,
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