hey everyone... I quit my job today. I've only been working their for, get this, 2 weeks, but, I can't keep doing the kind of work I have been [sales]. I had someone come up to me today and ask me what was wrong. I wanted to try and explain that I was in pretty bad pain and that all this stuff was going on with me on a mental level and all that... I must have looked really distressed. Anyways, I quit because going to work was more than just an inconvenience in that I am trading time for money... it was putting me through physical, and, coupled with the severity of my depression, mental torment.

I really don't know what I can do. I don't think I can work a normal job right now, but I have to make some sort of income. The fact is, you need money, obviously, but I just don't know what sort of work I could do that wouldn't make me feel like I were killing myself each minute.

Sigh.

Johannakat you related a story that I told regarding having arm symptoms occur without even using my arm. To put it in its context, I had gone down to my workshop where my woodworking equipment is situated and I was just about to use my bandsaw when my hand started tingling. I hadn’t even lifted the arm. I thought I was going nuts. Some time later I was in the rehab gymnasium with my shoulder blade taped down for the first time and I was about to adjust the exercise bike for my settings when the new tape made me aware that I had moved my shoulder blade up without even lifting my arm yet. This occurred every time I anticipated using my affected arm. The moral of the story is the symptoms were not happening because I was using my affected arm but because I was using muscles (overusing some muscles) to stabilize my shoulder blade before using the arm. This I believe is the pec minor compromising the brachial plexus. Another example of this would be, imagine you’ve got a really sore lower back and someone threatens to throw a heavy object to you, you tense up in anticipation and your back hurts however you haven’t had to catch the heavy object. It is the stabilization which causes the problem.

It is extremely difficult to face the next day, hour or even minute when there is no indication that your circumstances are going to improve. For me the most depressing thing was when I described in detail (those who have read some of my posts would understand that this is likely to have occurred) the circumstances of my condition and then I would receive a medical report which misreported detail after detail. I was looking for help and not receiving it. I believe the way forward is to know which things make you worse and refuse to do them, and gently improve your physical abilities. Make each day better than the last, if there is a bad day , think of how the week has been and if you have been doing the right things it should be better than the worst week that you have had.
It would be most peculiar if you didn’t feel down given the circumstances that you are in.
There are a lot of physical things that you can do to improve your condition, try them, if the don’t work don’t satisfy the whim of some PT who says they should, they go home and don’t have to wear the consequences of some neural stretch or whatever caused the problem. Please consider some of the strategies that have helped me. They have changed my world around. Regards towelhorse