facing my own limitations

Have the truck and Camper, need to get them utilized more, need free time for that.  Also need to plan out more free time where working 12-14 hour days do not allude to that very well.  Fact of the matter I do not want to end up too crippled up to enjoy retirement.

I am base lining to return to retirement as of October.  As find my necessity is less and less useful to employer, will let them know when get to a four week point and give that notice.  can at least train up next replacement.

DougG wrote: My shoulder joints just seem loose- then a pain shoots across, nothing like Ive never had before,,

Doug-  do you feel tingling in hands, pain in wrists, forearms, elbows, biceps, and underneath shoulder blades?

When you 'hit your funny bone', what's happening, is physical impact to the Ulnar nerve... it services that part of your arm that 'lights up' when you impact that spot on the back of your elbow.  There's another one (the Radial nerve) that comes down the inside of your forearm to your thumb.

These two nerves comprise of a majority of the operation of your forearms and hands.

They both come out from the spinal cord between cervicals C5 and C6... which is in your neck just about shoulder level.  This area is surrounded around the back side by a group of muscles called Trapezius... they're the triangular muscles that go from the tops of your shoulders, up to about your ears.  The actual trapezius group extends down your back to shoulder blades (scapula) and down to your middle back (thoracic vertebrae)... and because of how they are, when you LIFT something, the lifting load is suspended by the trapezius, and transfers that load to the stack of vertebrae from the highest cervical (Occiput) downward, through C2,3,4,5,6,7 etc.

Each one of those vertebrae have a piece of padding we generally refer to as 'discs'... they're cushions between each vertebrae... and between the vertebrae and 'discs' are openings where nerves branch off the spine and go places.

The ports between C5 and C6 are where the Ulnar and Radial nerve groups pass.

When you have a disc problem, the nerve groups passing through get pinched.

Nerves have a coating referred to as 'sclera'... think of it like insulation on a wire, but with natural lubrication, so that when your body moves around, the nerves don't get snagged on stuff.

When there's a pinch, not only does the nerve start having difficulty carrying it's sensory and motor signals, that sclera gets worn away, leaving the nerve susceptible to abrasion.

Why am I explaining all this?

Well... when you get a pinch or abrasion on a nerve, it's signalling gets screwed up, and wierd things happen.  You can lose sensation in strange places, have pain in several places where there's nothing wrong... you can have problems with strength in some areas... even paralysis in some level.

When I had my C5/6 collapse, I had pain starting in my neck, but in the center of by shoulder blade (on the inside, not the outside), aching shoulders that felt really loose, pain in the back of my bicep, pain in my elbow, forearm, tingling in my fingers, and eventually, total inability to move my fingers or thumb.

C5/C6 nerve problems are very common for people who work hard with their hands... because we're always lifting things, and they're not 'light' things.  Eventually, that catches up to us, along with bumping heads and being bounced around in machines, and those nerve groups get pinched between C5 and C6.

in my case, it took an hour and 15 minute discectomy (removing disc, and replacing it with a titanium honeycomb spacer filled with processed bone powder) and then several months of healing (while the cervicals 'fused' together) to resolve what was nothing short of excruciating pain.

So Doug, if you're having pain kinda like what I described... and you've got pain in your lower neck, you probably have some sort of a pinch going on there.