Driving is a pain
Sunday I drove from here to Port Costa to visit my father and his wife. It’s about an hour trip. I left at 1pm. By 1:30 I was in the East Bay and in so much pain I couldn’t stand it. I was whimpering like a dog. I had whimpy tears streaming down my cheeks. I debated pulling over but what would that accomplish? I wanted to go home but it was 30 minutes either way and Anne is a nurse so even though I knew it wasn’t anything that needed fixing, she would probably understand and not get irritated that I was a ball of whaa when I showed up. So, I showed up with my jaw on both sides just SCREAMING. Again, nothig to be fixed, but why on Earth was it so painful? What had made it so angry? Was it the bumping up and down of my car? Oh! I had a coke. I thought maybe it was the caffeine…so I thought Shelby you are lame. You knew not to drink caffeine…so I vowed not to do that again and at 9pm I mustered up the nerve to drive home and I don’t remember if I was in so much pain on the way home so I think I thought my conclusion was correct. No caffeine.
Monday I drove to work and 20 minutes into my drive in the rain and traffic my jaw started screaming again. Same spot. By the time I got to work I was absolutely miserable but everyone was so excited to see me I couldn’t really say I felt like poop (no one wants to hear that) so I did the best I could (CJ could tell something was NOT good) and then went to see Dr. Li at 1 to confirm that yes, I have gained weight. (heh) He asked how the pain was and I didn’t really think to tell him about the jaw stuff because I don’t think he really wants to hear that either…he just wants to make sure I’m healing well and getting better and the rest of the stuff is kind of my deal. I mean, I did tell him about Sunday but then I said I thought it was the caffeine. No biggee.
This morning I got in my car. No rain. Not bad traffic (except at Stanford University exit as always) but 20 minutes in (somewhere around Stanford) the pain became constant again (I have pain intermittently throughout the day on a regular basis, it’s when it just keeps going that it drives me batty). It stayed at it’s same level of ow as I parked and moaned in my car, happy no one could hear me. I had an appointment I was going to attend with C in 5 minutes but I could not bring myself to get out of my car. When I finally did I gimped into the office where M said “Do you want to go join C?” to which I said in one abrupt word: NO. She did a double take and realised I was in a lot of pain and encouraged me to go home but there was NO WAY I was getting back into the pain causer and driving another 30-40 minutes back home. An hour later I felt fine. I knew I would. So I stayed until 4 and did evals and all that good stuff…but why in the world did it hurt so bad? Have I now come to the conclusion that I cannot drive more than 30 minutes? Crazy.
I think actually the problem may be that I clench my teeth while driving. It’s a possibility. And since my teeth don’t touch in the back the muscles just get really stretched and tight and annoyed. Nathalie thinks maybe I wore my hair wrong which is also valid because maybe I kept my neck in a funky position which led to jaw pain. It also might be that stres makes it hurt and when it hurts it stresses me out more so it just kind feeds itself. Who knows. All I know is I am erring on the side of this: mornings suck. So now my schedule is noon go to work. So there.
Best part of today? An excited Nicholas popping out of nowhere in the cafeteria to give me a huge non-chin smashing bear hug. Now THERE’s a warm welcome! Made me fell all warm and fuzzy in a non-molding sandwich under the bed kind of way.
peace out.