Tag Archives: health - Page 4

Payback is a Bitch

Posted by on April 25, 2013 No comments

Yesterday during work break, I went on a walk.  It was a strange, rather painful walk, as my feet were killing me most of the time.  I resolved that I would wear different shoes if I was going to go walking again.  After getting back and settling down, I found that I couldn’t sit.  My back would twinge in that way that says “get ready, here it comes…”  So, I did what was reasonable.  I put some ice on my back and left work to get home and lie down.

At home, I applied the TENS belt and was disappointed after an hour that it wasn’t doing any good.  So I did some leg stretches and then knocked myself out with my in-case-of-emergency-take-these medpack and slept the night away.  I woke up in the morning very, very slowly.  During this extended period of reflection, I found that the stabbing pain was still there, recurring every 10-20 minutes.  Additionally, I found the pain radiating down my leg.  Ohhhhh….  Nice to see you again, sciatica.  How have you been?  I thought I kicked you out years ago.

In my experience, I have two types of back problems.  One affects me when I move and one affects me when I stay still.  It’s my good fortune these two problems don’t occur together.  The first case is severe.  It starts with little warning jabs like I had, then when you don’t expect it, bam.  You are frozen solid and then immobile for about a week.  These incidents have been chronicled in older posts.  The second case isn’t as bad.  I mean it’s not awesome or anything, but it’s not debilitating.  I can take care of it with a few weeks of leg stretches, focusing on the hamstrings.  The important thing is that since I know it’s the second case, I don’t have to necessarily be cautious about moving about.

However, the timing of this recurring injury is interesting since I’m scheduled to take classes this weekend for Reiki.  Reiki, for those that don’t know, is energy healing.  I have a series of pages that I’m writing for this blog on my Reiki experiences that aren’t released yet, but will be shortly after my classes.  This is going to be an excellent first test of the healing ability of Reiki.

Deviation

Posted by on April 6, 2013 No comments

In a Talking Heads song, there is a line, “Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens.”  In statistical terms, the enjoyment level of heaven would be 100% with a standard deviation – or variance – of zero.  The song tries to express that as long as the deviation is zero, the enjoyment level could be 100%, 80%, 40%, or 0% and it would all be the same.  Because, without variance, how would you know any different?

An oft-used phrase, “It’s all relative,” has more meaning than we typically intend when we casually toss it out.  Any evaluation of any experience is based upon past experience.  Our report of that experience is either expressed in relative terms or, failing a basis of comparison, a threshold evaluation.  How was your day yesterday?  “Good.”  Good, relative to other days I’ve had.  How was your skydive yesterday?  “Awesome!”  Awesome, compared to other activities like working.  Or maybe, “Good.”  Good, compared to dying.  Living through an experience is an example of a threshold evaluation.

I bring all this up in memory of getting over a nasty cold.  I don’t get sick.  Well, although that sounds like an absolute, I mean I don’t get sick with any regularity.  Less than once a year.  Living like that, you forget and take for granted how good it feels to be healthy.  My standard deviation was falling.

This can apply to just about anything in life.  You don’t know how bad (or good) your relationship was until you start a new one.  You don’t know what life can be like when you’re suffering chronic pain.  You don’t recognize how convenient having a car is until your car doesn’t start.  Breaking out of a rut is nothing more than adding a deviate sample to your population in order to increase the mean.