The sinus/migraine/I don't know what headache I've had for a couple of days finally went away, along with the cramp or spasm in one of my neck muscles that was part of it.

(I know. I Should Really Get That Looked At. But I have a lot of discomfort about going to doctors I don't know...there's the effort of setting up the appointment, the question of Are They Going To Weigh Me And Then Harass Me About My Weight (there is a doctor I stopped going to because of this issue), the possibility of something being very wrong - wrong in a way that I'd probably rather not know about until I dropped dead of it (I am sort of a reverse hypochondriac. I don't want to go to the doctor because I am afraid they will find something terribly wrong that will be painful and arduous to treat). And I suspect the diagnosis of the neck thing will be "old injury" and the treatment will be pain pills or muscle relaxants, neither of which I want to take - I'd rather cope with an occasional low-grade but tolerable pain than not be able to function.)

I do think the neck thing is an old injury that flares up periodically when I'm stressed, when I have to carry something that's too heavy for me (literally or figuratively).

When I was a tiny child, I took swimming lessons in the summer. Summers in northeastern Ohio are often not all that warm (and this was the 1970s, a historically cool decade). I think I was six when it happened. The last day of swim class, they let us have fun - splash in the pool, jump off the edge into deeper water, use the slide. It was a cool day that day. I remember I was on the slide, getting ready to go down into the water. Someone called out my name and I turned my head to see. And immediately the muscles in my neck (wet little kid, chilly day, sudden movement) seized up. I don't remember if I slid down the slide or if the pain required someone to get me off of it. I just remember spending the rest of the day lying on the sofa at home with a heat pack on my neck and being allowed to watch more television than I normally was.

(Oddly, I remember that one of the things I watched was "Barnaby" - a kind of kids' show that used to be incredibly common but has almost entirely vanished; one of those locally done things with a goofy host who did old Soupy Sales jokes in between showing Bugs Bunny or Tom and Jerry cartoons. You know, given the nostalgia-mining of the networks, one of the channels that shows cartoons should come up with a faked-up version of one of those shows - I could see them doing it on Adult Swim - but have it be, you know, just slightly OFF. I think Gen-Xers would find that amusing. Well, if it weren't annoying. I could imagine it easily getting annoying)

So periodically the neck flares up. It's mainly an annoyance. I assume what happened is, all those years ago, I tore the muscle. And muscle doesn't heal, without surgery. (Or maybe there's scar tissue in there.) At any rate, the thought of what I'd have to go through to have it repaired (surgery or that scar-tissue-breaking-up thing) sounds more painful than the periodic muscle cramps.

Hopefully it will stay un-flared-up for a while now. I've had two recent flare ups but both are traceable - one, I had spent a LONG day doing paper revisions and doing a lot of both typing and mousing. And this one - I think it's that I'm (figuratively) carrying a few things too heavy for me at the moment.