Just whining...

Evidently being a little tense affects the way my shoulder feels.

Visited Shawn today (Thursday) and he was a bit surprised at both the increase in my pain level and decrease in comfortable range of motion.

After we talked about my week, we decided that maybe I'm a little tense. And that hopefully next week (I see him again on Monday) will be better.

I sure hope so.

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At the risk of sounding even more whiny, my knee hurts.
In the general scheme of things, a little knee or shoulder pain isn't that big a deal. I know that.

And I sympathize with everyone who has it worse. I know there are a lot of them.

But my knee has been hurting off and on (mostly on) for almost a year now. If it worked better, I could kick myself in the ass for letting my warranty expire. :)

The knee pain isn't huge, really. But it's enough to wake me up several times in a night. That has its good side, though, if you think about it. It means that my shoulder pain has become small enough now that I'm once again aware that I have a knee.

My knee is waking me up at night. And it hurts when I get out of bed in the morning. And it hurts all day long. And it freezes up and then POPS at random. I never know when it's going to happen. It's not stable, either. I barely kept from crashing into a wall this morning at the school. There are two inclines leading down into the cafeteria. Since I know the knee isn't reliable, I am careful going down the slopes. I slow way down and hover my hand next to the wall just in case.

In this case, it was good to take that precaution.

Except it was my right hand and I ended up hitting the wall with my right shoulder.


::Sigh:::

Because it's been bothering me so much and I'm so very tired of all of it, I've been pondering about the best time to have the surgery done on the knee.

Our entire staff is put on seasonal leave at the beginning of the summer, meaning we have to pay our share of our benefits out of itty bitty paychecks... but then I get to KEEP my health benefits over the summer.

But I'll be collecting disability payments while I'm unable to work.
I'd rather have those payments based on the amount of time I average during a regular work week than based on the very few summer hours I'm likely to get.

But that would mean having the surgery done before school gets out in June. Or waiting until school starts in the fall and trying for November again.

Which sort of worked, except everything at my site went to hell.

If I had surgery over the summer and ended up on leave, I might lose benefits again due to how long I have worked/not worked full time. I don't know how many hours I have put in, but my guess is... not enough.

And I will not go without the benefits again, so I may have to postpone the surgery based on what's best for my family and have the surgery during the 2010-11 school year

Head spinning.

Any advice?
Anyone know how to navigate Oregon Worker's Comp law?
I don't know what to do.

I'm leaning toward just working all summer on a sore knee to give my shoulder all the time it needs to finish healing so I can be on friggin' crutches for six weeks. But of course that means me leaving my site again during the school year for surgery.

And that sucks, too.

::sigh::

Come back tomorrow, I will try to post something that isn't whiny.

Leave good advice in the comments... I don't know what to do.