My arm was killing me. Suddenly it hurt so much, I couldn’t raise it above my shoulder without excruciating pain. A mystery began.
Some people might pass off such a mishap and either assume it was a sudden injury without an explanation, or it might be something which could be found on one’s favorite symptom tracking website. I knew it had to be a muscle strain, but how did it happen?
I became Shirley Holmes.
I had not fallen or lifted anything heavier than a high-calorie ice cream sundae, which would make my hips bigger but not my arm painful. I went to bed with the pain, so I didn’t sleep funny and wake up that way.
Suddenly, I came upon the possible answer, and in Shakespearean fashion I cried out, “It is the cause, my soul!” (although I could also attribute this to Anthony Hopkins as VanHelsing in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, I went for the original out of respect for my fellow writer). I then set about to do a comparison of two chairs.
Why? Earlier in the week, I had a visit from the upholsterers I had hired to repair the cushions on the dining room chairs. Since I then had a collection of chairs with no cushions (reminiscent of a scene in the new version of Casino Royale), I elected to sit in a kitchen chair to work from home. After a few hours, I started to feel the discomfort, but attributed it to sitting at a new chair at a bad angle, but then the a-ha moment kicked in, and I grabbed one of the dining room chair skeletons and set it next to the kitchen chairs.
Chairs is not chairs, to coin a phrase.
The kitchen chair seat was a few inches lower than the dining chair, even without the cushion! This meant that I was raising my arms at a higher level to work at the same table as before, and putting additional strain on my mouse arm.
Fortunately I had some tie-on cushions, and used them and a quick guide to ergonomics to bolster the kitchen chair to a height at which I could sit comfortably. The pain has lessened but is not completely gone because my poor muscles need healing time. So I’m on over-the-counter stuff and cold packs while trying to do entertaining things with my own computer, and I’ve been chiding myself for overlooking something that had such an effect on my life. But then, who thinks of the height of the seat on a chair?
If you have, raise you hand because you can. I sure can’t right now.
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