Saturday, March 10, 2012

Death Valley, CA - A Day of Rest

We reviewed our decision of last night to take a rest today before we moved on and decided that we still wanted to rest a day. These two little Energizer Bunnies sometimes run out of steam and, after 4 long days in Death Valley, it was time to sit. There is so much to do and see here but now we will have a reason to come back. We’ve built up a list of things we’d still like to do here and will be back. Death Valley is intimidating and often desolate but it is intriguing and there are things to see and do here that cannot be done any place else.

Sometime last night I rolled over and my arm hurt. I was able to get back to sleep but when I awoke this morning, I could not move my arm with out pain. Years ago, I got bursitis in my left shoulder and this feels just like that. My docrtor who was all of 89 years old would give me a shot of cortizone and some prednisone pills to take. Where am I going to get that out here in Death Valley? Probably tomorrow when we leave.

As the day wore on, my arm got worse and worse such that by the end of the day I could only hold it near my side. Any other movement hurt. Of course, without one arm, it was difficult to take off my t-shirt, it hurt to wash my hair and I finally began to use only one arm for everything. And, aren’t I glad that we had already changed our plans for today? I don’t think I cold stand the bouncing and jouncing of a washboard road for 26 miles, one way. Then we’d have to come back. I would have done it but not been too happy about it

Thus, I couldn’t do much more than work on the computer so I did finances and reviewed the pictures we had taken over the last few days. Many I deleted and others I made sure we had the correct labels on them. But, we couldn’t go online.

At night, sleep was difficult also. I normally sleep on my stomach and with my arm hurting to move it, I could only lay there on my back. Sometime I must have gotten some sleep. I do know that I awakened several times during the night and noticed that my arm didn’t hurt so much, but I was still mostly asleep.

In the morning, when I was actually awake and aware, I realized the my arm didn’t hurt nearly as much. I still couldn’t use it too much but I could actually wash my face with my left hand. Later on that day I could actually take off my t-shirt to change. Wow. Miraculous recovery. Must have been the thought of an 8” needle given me a cortisone shot that did it.

In the evening I ran out and grabbed our last sunset shot of the valley.
Sunset-5-2012-03-10-12-17.jpg

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