Dealing with whatever is going on my back has been a pain in the butt. My myofascial release therapist thinks that it’s probably something in my shoulder with my rotator cuff. At this point anything using my right arm from the fingers up causes pain. Typing causes pain in my shoulder, so I’ve been doing as little of that is possible. Mostly I’ve been using my phone or my tablet because I can type on those one-handed. However, last week I finally broke down and decided to order Dragon speak. On Thursday I pushed myself as much as I could and I paid for it on Friday, spending the day doing nothing but watching Netflix. Dragon speak arrived yesterday, so I finally decided to try to set it up today. I had read that it’s a pain in the butt to get trained. However, so far I’m finding that the pain in the butt is training me. Dragon speak has actually done really well with picking up what I’m saying, however it did not come with really good instructions for learning all the nuances and instructions for how to do things like edit what you’ve already dictated. Some of the commands are fairly obvious, however others are not so much. I am kind of wishing I had ordered the Dragon speak for dummies book along with software.I’m really hoping that this helps me.
As far as what’s going on with my back, I did get my MRI reports and I do have several bulging discs and two herniated discs in my back. However the spine Dr. did not feel that those were impinging on the nerves that would affect my shoulder and arm, so he didn’t feel like there was anything he could really do for me. He referred me upstairs to their pain management clinic where I have an appointment on the 20th. So far pain pills have not really done anything for my pain; the only thing that seems to help is ice or icy hot patches. So I’m not really sure what they think they’ll be able to do at the pain management clinic. If anything it will likely be cortisone shots or something of that sort. After seeing my myofascial release therapist and his agreeing that he thinks it’s in the shoulder, I went ahead and called an orthopedic doctor that I saw several years ago when I had tennis elbow and made an appointment with him. I will see him on Friday. I’m also waiting for nerve conduction study that has been ordered, however we could not get that scheduled until the first week of February. Given the situation I decided it was probably best to not try to do school this semester. This had me really down for several days in the last couple weeks as I realized what I was giving up, especially having to give up the opportunity to be a lab assistant for my psych professor from last semester. Paul brought up the prospect of canceling our vacation which is at the end of January, which initially had me really depressed especially after having to give up school. It felt like I was being forced to give up everything. However, the more I thought about it the more I’m starting to realize that it probably is the best plan. But it still really sucks.
So that’s where I’m at. Trying to train my Dragon so that I can at least get some work done and be somewhat productive. Because I’ve really had about enough of Netflix.I used this post to learn the basics of Dragon speak. I guess you would say this is my first test of the product. I learned quite a bit about how to use it just doing this post. It’s still going to take a lot of getting used to.
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