Time To Get This Blog Active Again
Hey Folks!
Just checking in between the holidays to let you know this blog is about to get more active once again. That is the plan, at least.
First, I feel I need to briefly explain what has been going on in my personal life. Ever since the Minnesota Firearms Deer Opener I have been dealing with some health issues. I won’t go into all the boring details, but this health matter has provided some new daily challenges for me.
It started after a miserably cold and windy deer season opener where I ended up contracting walking pneumonia…by the following weekend I was coughing so badly in the stand it made little sense to even be out in the woods, but I tried hunting anyway. Well, one thing led to another and I ended up with some infection in my body that I thought was simply influenza. You know the routine, body aches and pains, general stiffness, that worn-down feeling where you don’t even want to get out of bed.
Well, this persisted to almost Thanksgiving where things just didn’t seem right. I went back to my doctor and at first he thought I was just dealing with some post-infection symptoms that would soon disappear. They didn’t, in fact, they even got worse here about a month ago.
I went back in to the doctor for a bunch of blood work and to make matters simplified it was discovered I have inflammation going on in my body that is not going away. Yes, without ibuprofen I feel like an old man these days. Currently, I am waiting to be seen in the Rheumatology Department at the Mayo Clinic, but appointments are backed up until mid-February. So the wait continues….
From day to day I do not know if the muscle pain and stiffness will be worse in my fingers…or my wrists…or my elbows, knees, ankles or toes. Thankfully it seems to be isolated to my distal extremities, but I have to be honest with you not feeling 100% is something I am not used to in my life.
Honestly, I don’t want this to sound like an excuse as to why I have not been blogging more…but the truth is over the past 6 to 7 weeks I have not done nearly as much outdoor activity as I had planned to do. When you’re feeling run-down and like crap all the time just getting through some of the daily grind in life can be a challenge.
Even though my doctors do not fully have a handle on what is going on, I do feel improved and have found ways to better manage my pain. As other business aspects in my life begin to settle down, my plan is to devote more of the energy I have to this blog…especially gearing up for the SHOT Show.
Some might wonder if the SHOT Show will be too much for my current health state…to that I must say I don’t know. Mostly I experience the pain and stiffness when I sit down for periods of time…so at SHOT I will need to keep moving.
I gotta say it sucks to get older, and for the first time in my life I am really discovering what old age feels like. But on days when my fingers don’t hurt too bad, I promise to be using them more frequently to update this blog with my thoughts on a wide variety of outdoors matters.
©2011 Jim Braaten. All Rights Reserved. No Reproduction without Prior Permission.