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[at-l] Re: Ibugroovin'
TWEGAD...
Painkillers mask Lyme disease (and others), which I found out the hard
way. Damn little bugger wasn't visible until the "bulls-eye" showed. Young
whipper-snapper Doctor in Winsor Connecticut gave me hell for NOT
recognizing the early symptoms (which can be withor without a rash):
FATIGUE,
HEADACHE,
NECK STIFFNESS,
PAIN or STIFFNESS in MUSCLES or JOINTS,
SLIGHT FEVER,
SWOLLEN GLANDS,
CONJUNCTIVIS,
JAW DISCOMFORT,
or
SWELLING or just PAIN in several joints;
Sound familiar or have you already disguised something.??
I was ONLY downing 800 mg of "Vit-I" in prior to taking off in the AM to
"make life easier".
NET, NET, check your self very carefully,,, highest risk months are late
April thru August. Wood/Dog ticks also carry goodies, but they're easier to
find (even w/o bifocals).!
take care,
WIXer AT-94
aka
At 03:06 PM 4/17/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Waldo wrote:
>>I shrugged it off, downed some more
>>: Ibugroovin', and kept hikin'. By the time Totin' Chip, Wooden Nickel,
******* snip ********
>>: The Big K with Senor Wiggly and The Brothers on 10/20.
**** Rest of not is Bald Eagles memo. ****
**** left it attached, good info. ********
>I don't have the time to get involved in a lot of discussions, but I am
>gonna say something about pain killers. And while I don't intend to
>personalize this to Waldo, he did provide the trigger to set me off.
>I'm not gonna give you the "substance abuse" lecture - I'm gonna give
>you the "if you want to finish your thruhike, quit screwing up your
>body" pitch.
>If you read some of the 97 thruhiker journals there are a number of
>of people who have been or are presently using pain killers in order
>to keep on hiking. Some of them are calling it Vitamin I, but that's
>a trivialization - and a dangerous one at that. Aspirin, Ibuprofen,
>Naproxen and Tylenol are NOT Vitamin anything - they're drugs. And
>they ALL come with side effects. I managed to acquire an allergy to
>aspirin some years ago by using too much, too often, too long.
>My first partner in 92 got a perforated stomach from taking too much
>aspirin. For those who don't know, Ibuprofen and Naproxen can do the
>same thing. And massive doses of Tylenol can result in cirrhosis of the
>liver - and that can kill you.
>And then there's the unadvertised side effect for long distance hikers -
>if you keep your body drugged up on "Vitamin I" so it doesn't feel the pain,
>then your body will never develop the ability to generate the level of
>endorphins that allow long distance hikers to handle the pain without
>drugs - and get the real "high" that comes as a side effect of those
>endorphins.
>The message is that if you need pain killers while you're hiking, you
>need to re-examine what you're doing cause, contrary to some peoples
>opinion, it's NOT normal to need pain killers in order to walk your miles.
>If you need pain killers to hike, then you're masking and ignoring what
>your body is trying to tell you. If you ignore it long enough you can do
>some real hardcore permanent damage to knees, back and feet. And then
>when your body crashes - that just might be the end of your thruhike.
>Want an example? Read Waldo's post again - or go look at his page.
>So -- you have pain? Good - foot pain means you might need different
>boots, or orthotics, or to walk less miles, or to walk slower or maybe
>just to take care of your blisters. Knee pain or shin splints? Try
>learning
>to walk - and the fact is that even a lot of thruhikers have never really
>learned that. Or maybe you need a brace, or to dump some weight or to
>walk slower uphill - or downhill. Back and/or shoulder pain? Get your
>pack adjusted, or dump some weight, or maybe - again - learn to walk.
>Are there other answers? Yeah - a lot of them, but you won't find them
>at the bottom of an Ibuprofen bottle. As a thruhiker, pain is your friend -
>it tells you when you're walking wrong, it tells you when you're getting
>a blister or stressing your knees to the point of damage or when your
>pack is loaded or adjusted wrong or when your boots don't fit right or
>you're doing too many miles, too fast, too soon.
>Pay attention to the pain - fix the problem - and stop trying to do your
>hike
>the easy way. There really isn't any free lunch. As a thruhiker - you'll
>learn to LOVE pain. And if you don't - you'll probably go home early.
>Now come the $64,000 questions -
>First - didn't I hurt? Of course I did, just like every other thruhiker.
>I had foot pain almost every night after I started doing 'big' miles (15+).
>I think that's endemic. I don't even remember where the numb toes showed
>up, but I damn sure remember the steps in Virginia that I fell on and got a
>couple compressed discs and a bruise that I couldn't cover with a dinner
>plate. But that wasn't an excuse for me to use painkillers for hiking.
>Second - did I use painkillers? Yeah - when I stopped for the day and was
>cooking dinner. And I took a couple more before going to sleep every night
>because even if I didn't actively hurt, there was always some low level
>pain that could make me restless and keep me awake . I use Tylenol
>because I'm allergic to aspirin.
>Third - did I hike on painkillers? Yeah - when my knees crashed in the
>Presidentials - but I damn sure didn't start in Tennessee. And then again
>when I broke my wrist in Maine. But even then I wasn't taking 3000+ mg
>a day. If you need that much you shouldn't be on the trail.
>Fourth - do I know anyone who used them to hike - and still finished? Yeah,
>a few, but most of them aren't hiking much anymore. Permanent knee or
>ankle or back damage makes it tough to keep on long distance hiking.
>Enuff - this came out a little rougher than I intended, probably because it
>irritates me to see people blow themselves off the trail by misusing/abusing
>pain killers in the mistaken belief that the drugs will fix their problems.
>The drugs don't fix the problems, gang - that's your job. Do it.
>Walk softly,
>Jim
Dick & Lyn Wix
(Rochester, MN)
wixer@bigfoot.com
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