Gerd, muscle cramps, spasms, burning, ocular migraines… oh my!

Ugh, Friday I wound up in the ER.  Nothing life threatening, mind you.  But I was dealing with bouts of a crippling pain in my arms.  Mostly, my left arm.  It stars with a severe burning sensation in my left shoulder blade, and the pain intensifies pretty quickly, throbbing in my left arm, and eventually causing the entire arm to cramp up to the point my fingers can’t be opened up, even if I tried pulling with my other hand.  The pain of this experience is severe, and when it’s over, it’s still sore and has that pain of it threatening to worsen again.  This continued to happen until i didn’t know how I’d get through the day.  It was horrible

I was sent home with muscle relaxers and major pain pills.  What’s that supposed to help in the long run, though?  THe weekend was terrible, too, especially since TWO, yes, TWO, of my friends were getting married – on Sat and Sun, and yes, I was the photographer for both!  I Felt so bad about letting them down, but I did my best.  And happily, our mutual friend at the 2nd wedding, was a photographer and filled my shoes.  But seeing as the girl getting married is ALSO a photographer, you want MORE from yourself on such days… but unfortunately, she got only a fraction of me   Oh well… it was a lovely weekend, despite my pain.  That was so severe at times, that I had the brides pulling on my arms in the case it could be a trapped nerve – and sometimes I’d find a shady corner or end bathroom stall in which to allow my pain to take over as I breathed heavily through it.

The pills from the doc didn’t seem to help much.  Rather, they disabled my arm from being able to completely cramp… which in turn just made my arm sore and threaten for longer…   What seemed to help the most, was an acid-reducer.  I took this because I had zero appetite and felt “up to here” with being full even though I’d hardly eaten for days.  That’s sure something I wish would stick with me, but without the pain thank you.

Anyway, I had a docs appt this afternoon.  I need to see a chiro and a massage therapist.  Cha-ching, but if it helps me feel better and relieve some the headaches I’ve been having repeatedly – can you say flashing geometric-shaped wriggling eye snakes?  HORRENDOUS!!! If you’ve had them, you know exactly what I mean… I get chills just thinking about them – BLUGH.

So… does anyone have any experience with reflux or gerd that has caused a lot of arm/shoulder blade pain?  How about reoccuring tension headaches and occular migraines??

All these things with me recently have really made me realize I need to take more care of my health.  Vanity being last on the list…