Udderly painful.

I've always had shoulder and back pain.  Not constant, but definitely nagging.  Migraines, tension headaches, locked up shoulders, lower back pain, upper back pain, shoulder pain.  They have plagued me throughout the years, and I never thought much of them except, "Gosh, I'm a whiner."

I have "thrown out my back" doing simple things like leaning into a grocery cart, grabbing a box, or the ever-popular swinging a plastic bat at a wiffle-ball.  I'm top-heavy.  It's just the way it is.

It's tough for me to sit for a long time, especially in a "sitting up straight" position.  The middle of my back just kind of starts up with dull pain, which progresses to a heat-pain, and eventually a "sharper" dull pain that kind of feels like someone's shoving a dull knife between my shoulder blades.

Not that I actually know what a knife to the back feels like, I'm just trying to paint you a picture.

Conferences where you're set up at a hotel in a banquet chair for 8 hours a day are my nemesis.  The upper back and shoulder pain (which can radiate tot he arms) can get pretty unbearable, and I feel like a fool needing to take pain reliever to simply sit on my ass all day.  If only we could have lying-down conferences!  Better yet, zero-gravity conferences.

Jury duty (and I was kind of excited!  I got to be part of the justice system!) was sooooo terrible.  I had to finally tell the baliff that I couldn't sit still for that long, and to ask the judge if we could have more frequent breaks, or if I could stand in the jury box.

I got to where I was jogging regularly, had actually found a sports-bra that would bind me so tightly and completely that I wasn't flopping obscenely.  It didn't really "fit", and more than once I pulled or cramped up shoulder muscles trying to get into it, but it worked for my purposes.  My shoulders hurt like the dickens when I was done but I was tired of using the boob excuse.  I was done bing fat.

I accomplished a weight loss of about 40 pounds, felt pretty great for the most part, and maaaaybe went down a little in breast size.  I jogged 4.5 miles straight one day.  I entered and completed a 10K.  I wore the same bras, though I did need to use the tighter closures on some. A couple of them were noticeably looser, not necessarily to the point that I needed to buy new ones.

I've gained back probably 20 of that because I'm not running as much.  Breast size is relatively the same.  Back and shoulder pain is the same. Massages and pain relievers help, but I finally reached a point where I considered surgery.