Walking in a winter wonderland?

So this last week has seen a significant proportion of the UK covered in a blanket of snow. To be fair, I think snow makes the landscape look fabulous, conjures up romantic images of snuggling down with a hot choc by a roaring fire and dreaming of the future. But the reality for someone who's mobility impaired, snow and ice are nothing short of a nightmare.

It affects you physically. My muscles have stiffened up so much as the temperatures have plummeted well below zero. This has caused a fair amount of pain in the hip by the end of the day and today I've been suffering a suspected trapped nerve of some sort probably due to tense muscles. It has eased off in the last hour after using my TENS but it was a real tear-jerking sharp pain every time I put weight through my right leg.

Probably my biggest problem is down to the over-exaggerated external rotation I have with my right leg. I have to be excessively careful on any slippy surface as my right foot naturally swivels outwards and if this movement occurs too fast, I pull a lot of muscles around the hip and groin. This has happened on an over-polished laminate floor once, imagine an icy surface! The pain that accompanies this jerked movement is indescribable. I can only liken it to someone trying to dislocate my hip with a sharp pull of my foot and failing. And that pain lasts days. It can be incapacitating.

So any pain induced due by slipping in the bad weather starts to affect you psychologically. You start to display avoidance behaviour as you don't want to go out where there's a potential chance of slipping or falling (even if its a light frost). Your social life might start to suffer as you try to minimise any trip you must make that involves going outside. You then start to compulsively worry - it starts off as worrying about slipping and falling, and then escalates as you do begin to avoid going outside to worrying about getting food and other essentials into your home.

It turns into quite an exhaustive cycle. You slip or fall on the snow or ice, you are now in pain, you avoid going out until absolutely necessary, your muscles are tense and stiffen up, thus more likely to slip or fall and the cycle begins again.

I'm constantly amazed at people who seemingly just stride across large patches of thick sheet ice and they stay upright! I shuffle, stop, shuffle, slip, stop, calm down, shuffle shuffle......and eventually get to my destination, hopefully without falling, and by that point both my legs are aching and exhausted! That eventually leads to hip pain later in the day, so I don't even have to slip for this weather to cause me pain! Can't win eh?!

Only 2-3 more months of this, bring on spring time!! Merry christmas :o)

TENS

So tonight I tried out a TENS unit (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator). At first glance the unit is a lot smaller than I thought, and as it has a slider mechanism it looks like an oversized mobile phone. The electrodes are really easy to place and its very easy to just plug-n-go. I placed the electrodes as suggested for hip pain in the booklet, one over the greater trochanter region and one down on the side of the buttock. Pick a programme and go!

Well, it goes and you slowly increase the intensity of the pulse - otherwise it would be a bit of a shock! I found it seriously tickly for the first 5 minutes, but that subsided. I tried out a few of the different programmes and quite liked the sensation of increasing waves of intensity, this setting actually soothed away some of the muscle ache I'd been having all day in the glutes. So first try and I like it.

I wouldn't swap it for the analgesics but as I still get breakthrough pain with the painkillers anyways I thought it was worth a go to ease the extra aches and pains. I need to play around and customise the settings for me, along with better placement of the electrodes. But I like it, lets see what its like after a week.