Freedom!

Okay, so the past few days have been cause for a celebration at Casa Bunker. You may wonder why, given the fact that late last week I spent a whole night rocking Will in front of the vaporizer, followed by a whole morning at the pediatrician getting shots and breathing treatments for croup, followed by, um SNOW in March, and more sick kids. Followed by Sunday in our oh-so-incredibly-massively-and-terribly-HOT (like fire and brimstone hot) chapel wrestling with four kids.

BUT CELEBRATE WE MUST!

And why? Because in my former life, my pre-Ned Bushnell life, I would've been popping massive doses of motrin, icing my shoulder, and being in blinding pain. I never had shoulder pain, really, until I had kids. Then hauling and wrestling these little sweethearts aggravated a condition that could be described as brusitis, tendonitis, and chronic impingement. Take your pick. What it means is that my shoulder joint is massively inflamed which means - it hurts, like crazy. So I say things like "hey, doc, my shoulder hurts when I ____" and Doc says, "then stop ____", then I say, "no can do because _____ is a critical part of my life, i.e., carrying my child, bathing my child, feeding my child, etc., my child." So, the past six years have had some pretty painful moments. Moments painful enough that I avoided whatever tasks I could that would aggravate the shoulder.

BUT NO MORE!!

Because now I am in my post-Ned Bushnell life. And for those of you who don't know, Ned is my PT. I love Ned for several reasons First, he and his team of lovely BYU PT students give my 90 minutes of pampering attention - moist heat, ice, stretching, and I can't bring the kids! (hee-hee!) Well, Abby's come a coupla times, but she's not trying to search and destroy the premises.

Another reason I love Ned? Every week he gets all excited about the progress I'm making! I leave PT feeling like superwoman because I'm progressing so much faster (like 80% faster) than other people with my diagnosis. So, for the girl who can't make good progress on diet, exercise, homecleaning, scrapbooking, cooking, or virtually anything else I try, this is a huge thing. Have I mentioned I love NED?!

So now, after about a week of activities that would have destroyed me before Ned, my pain is a ZERO! No pain, no drugs. And I'm taller because my stretches and strengthening of my scapular muscles (or whatever the heck they are) is fixing the posture problem I've, uh, had, since I was taller than every boy I knew, so about, um 15 years at least.

FREEDOM!! Pain free and loving it!