The shit blog of Paul Chris Jones

It was all going so well. I was exercising six times a week, putting on muscle. People complimented me. They said I looked bigger, stronger. I was making progress towards being a chad.

It was all going so well. Too well.

It could have happened to anyone. Anyone that does bouldering that is. You see, in mid-October, I was at the local rock climbing centre, scaling up and down the walls like Spiderman. I'd been there for an hour, climbing up and down the walls. I was exhausted and covered in sweat. In hindsight, I should have stopped and gone home. But I didn't stop: "Just one more," I told myself, like a gambler putting his last coin into a slot machine.

I picked a hard wall to finish on. The climbing holds barely gave my feet enough space to stand on. I'd almost reached the top when what I now refer to as "The Event" happened — my foot slipped and I fell. I looked down and saw the ground rushing up to meet me. Now, I wasn't that high — the fall was only three metres — and when I landed, it was on a soft mat. But I landed awkwardly and fell partly on my arm. I felt a krrt in the top of my arm which I immediately knew wasn't good. To continue the slot machine metaphor, all the reels had finished spinning and each one had landed on the tiny faces of Doctor Robotnik from the Casino Nights Zone in Sonic 2, a metaphor which won't make sense if you haven't played Sonic 2.

I stood up. My arm felt a bit weird but otherwise fine. I experimented by stretching and rotating it. There was no pain, just a sensation that something wasn't quite right.

When I went to bed that night, I half-expected that by the next morning, my arm would be swollen to the size of a watermelon and locked completely in a half-bent position.

But no. The next day, my arm seemed fine. There was no pain, swelling or inflammation. As far as I could tell, I was lucky, and my arm was 100% okay.

Days 1-3

My arm was not 100% okay. But I didn't know this. So I immediately went back to doing exercise. I hurt my arm on Monday. On Tuesday I did the following:

• Gym class (Bodycombat)
• Swimming for 10 minutes
• Barbell bench press (10x50kg, 10x50kg, 10x50kg)
• Upper back machine (10x45kg, 10x48kg, 10x38kg)
• Close grip pull down (10x25kg, 10x25kg, 10x30kg)
• Arm curl twisting alternating (20x10kg, 20x15kg, 20x13kg)

Yes, I did all that with an injured arm. But, in my defense, my arm still felt 100% fine.

On Thursday I went rock climbing again. At first, it went okay. But after just ten minutes or so, my arm got tired. Then I had to stop climbing as my arm was becoming painful.

By the way, when you tear your muscle, you're supposed to follow the RICE protocol: rest, ice, compression and elevation. You stop exercising (rest), you put ice on the injury (ice), you wrap the injured area with a bandage to prevent swelling (compression), and you keep the injured body part above the level of your heart (elevation). By doing this, you reduce pain, swelling and inflammation. The injury heals faster and it minimises the formation of scar tissue.

There's this good picture which demonstates the difference between following the RICE protocol and failing to follow it. Unfortunately the quality's low, but it's the best quality I could find:

I didn't know about the RICE protocol. Well, I guess I must have heard about it during my thirty-five years of existence, but my brain had filed it away under "facts only sports people need to know" and didn't bother to bring that information out when I needed it. If it had, then my injury might not be as bad as it is today. It might even be healed.

Weeks 1-4

When you injure a muscle, it's during weeks 1 to 4 that you should do physiotherapy and rehabilitation. Rehabilitation is simple, pain-free exercises that help you to regain strength and motility.

What you should definitely not do is return to the exercises you were doing before, as this could reinjure the muscle.

So what I did, like an idiot, is try to return to the exercises I was doing before. I went rock climbing with my injured arm. At one point I was hanging from a rock solely from my injured arm, my entire body weight stretching it, for several seconds. I was still going to Bodycombat classes, classes that involve punching the air in front of you with as much force as possible.

I couldn't imagine stopping doing exercise; exercise was as much a part of my life as breathing or masturbating into a fleshlight. Exercise was my life. It was how I managed anger. And I had goals I wanted to meet. And the Bodycombat classes were my favourite part of the week; I couldn't stop going to those!

In my head, my arm was healing nicely and was getting better every day.

In reality, my arm was getting worse every day. At the end of the fourth week, the underside of my arm felt like it was sunburned, even though it couldn't have been sunburned as I never exposed it to the sun.

I made the decision to stop exercising. It was a drastic decision, but for the best. I knew that from now on, my arm would slowly get better.

After that

During the next week, my arm got worse. Yes, it actually got worse. I lost motility. Bending it or stretching it resulted in pain. I had the sensation that I should keep my arm in a half-bent position as if I was wearing an invisible sling. So I did that. I walked around the home with my arm up to my chest. I thought about actually buying a sling but didn't; whether it would have been a good idea or not, I don't know.

I became depressed. I had the bleak feeling that my arm would be injured forever. In my mind, my days of doing my favourite thing, Bodycombat classes, were over. I'd have to quit the gym and never return. I'd be one of those people who's always complaining about some pain in their body, like their knees or their back. The kind of person who declines a game of frisbee in the park because it would make their elbow tendinitis flare up. The kind of person who says things like, "I pulled a muscle five years ago and I still get pain today". My Wikipedia page (when I become famous and have a Wikipedia page) would say something like, "At the age of 35, Paul suffered an arm injury that never fully healed, and left him with life-long debilitating pain."

Doctor's appointment

My girlfriend encouraged me to see a doctor. So I went to the health clinic to make a doctor's appointment. There, the receptionist told me that the soonest possible appointment was in two weeks. Fucking hell. Two weeks of waiting to see a doctor. But I made the appointment because that's all they had.

But soon enough, my doctor's appointment came around. I told the doctor I'd hurt my arm six weeks ago while rock climbing. He was shocked and angry that I'd left it so long to see him. Apparently, I was supposed to go see him straight away, or at most three weeks after injuring myself, not six weeks after. He also glared at me angrily as I told him I'd still been doing exercise since then instead of resting the arm.

"Well there's nothing I can do now!" he said, in a bluster of anger. "You should have seen me weeks ago! Not six weeks after you injure yourself!"

But he reluctantly scribbled a prescription for rehabilitation onto his pad, before tearing it off and handing it to me. It was for ten sessions at the local physiotherapy clinic. Although before I left, he added, "It probably won't do anything now as you've left it too late!"

But I was feeling chipper, and replied, "With a bit of luck, my arm will be fine." He just glared at me some more from behind his desk as I left.

Physiotherapy

So I started rehabilitation. I imagined I'd be lifting some light dumbells or doing range-of-motion exercises while under the kindly supervision of a middle-aged man who would say things like, "That's it, just a little more," and "Well done Paul, you've done excellent work today. I'm really proud of you."

But no. What rehabilitation consisted of was me lying on a massage table while a physiotherapist used three things to try to make my arm better: electrical muscle stimulation (EMS), massage, and heat. Every time I went to a rehabilitation session, it was those three things: EMS, massage and heat. There was almost no deviation from these three things. Sometimes the order would be different, and sometimes they'd use a special ray instead of heat, a ray that was supposed to make my arm heal faster. But that was it. There were no light dumbells, no range-of-motion exercises. I felt a bit let down.

And honestly, I don't think the rehabilitation helped much. I didn't see any major benefit. Besides, it's all stuff I could do at home. At home I had a hot water bottle (heat), I could massage myself (massage), and I had a EMS device I'd bought years ago in the hopes it'd give me a six-pack (it didn't).

Day 67 — the water jet

The day before Christmas Eve (so Christmas Eve Eve), I was at the swimming pool and I stuck my arm into this pressurized jet of water that's supposed to give you a massage. I kept my arm in the jet of water for a few seconds, letting the water pummel and batter my arm like a Swedish physiotherapist, in the hope it would make my arm better.

But the water didn't make it better. No, the water made my arm worse.

Because the next day, I was sitting down and I accidentally brushed the back of my arm against a book on my lap, and I got a shock of severe prickly pain in my tricep that made me actually gasped with pain. I'd never felt this type of prickly pain before.

Another day soon after that, I was at the library doing work on my laptop, and the back of my arm just ever so slightly brushed the chair behind me and I felt the prickly pain again as if I'd brushed my arm against a cactus instead of a chair.

I stopped getting the cactus pain a few days later, but I never put my arm into that water jet again.

Day 100

Before I knew it, one hundred days had passed since I'd hurt my arm. This meant my recovery period was now in triple figures. To give you some perspective, pulled muscles are supposed to take no more than 6 weeks (42 days) to heal. Already, twice that amount of time had passed. The pain had changed though. Now it wasn't prickly anymore. Now it was duller, which was a good sign, but also sharp, but was a bad sign I guess (?).

That said, my arm felt stronger. Whereas before, my arm felt weak, like I couldn't use it in a fight without making it worse, now my arm felt like I could use it to lift a heavy box onto a shelf if I had to. So I was making progress.

On day 101, I woke up with like an annoying sensation in my armpit, so I had an idea: I got a rolling pin from the kitchen drawer and used it to massage my arm. The next day, my armpit felt 100% better. So I started using the rolling pin on my tricep too.

UPDATE: Today, five months after the injury, I'm glad to say my arm is 100% fine. Push-ups have helped me regain basic strength and I'm back to using gym machines.

All's well that ends well.

Saying that, I did injure my other arm two months ago from lifting heavy dumbbells at the gym.