Day 4 "Your upper body is just out of shape"

When I asked my orthopedic surgeon (who reconstructed my knee after I broke it in soccer) to inspect my painful winged right scapula (on multiple occasions), he always just said "It's winged and protruding, and the only thing that affects scapula positioning is muscle, so that means your upper body is out of shape. We could inject something to make the pain go away temporarily, but there is nothing surgical to do, and the only real solution is to exercise. Lift weights, do rowing exercises, etc."

I believed him. It made some sense to me that my upper body might be less strong recently, especially after breaking my knee and being less athletic for more than a year. So I bought resistance bands, a pull-up bar, etc and did rowing exercises, push-ups, pull-ups, Tony Horton videos, yoga, etc. Eventually I was probably in the best upper-body shape I'd ever been in, and my scapula still protruded, and it was still painful, and my doctor still told me to exercise more. So he must be wrong. TMS fits my personality, and I accept the diagnosis. I don't know why the pain hasn't gone away yet, so I want to do this whole program to really really accept and commit to the diagnosis just in case I unconsciously haven't accepted it or something. I can't think of any other explanation.

 

A friend of mine in Santa Barbara is a workaholic novelist, and I can remember last year when he told me how he's drove himself to ER to show the medics that he had a protruding bone that he was worried about. They told him, yes, you have a protruding scapula. He asked them what it meant? And they replied, you have a protruding scapula. That's it. But he spends many hours alone cranking out short stories and novels and is always rushing to ER with some complaint or other. Like so many other times before, they told him there was nothing wrong with him, so go back home and keep writing. The mind can be a very dangerous thing if you're chronically socially isolated and always obsessing over each detail of your body. Sounds a lot like the way TMS is generated in the first place. Oh, yes, and to add on one more salient detail, ever since my novelist high school friend turned 60, he's been obsessed with staying young and death and dying. More fuel for the obsessive inner fire!

 

Thanks!