By the end of June, I knew that something had to give with the pain that I was experiencing in my hips, hands, and shoulders.  I had finally concluded that the pain was debilitating and took an honest look at my exercise and sleep results and knew that I was on a downward spiral.

My doctor prescribed Meloxicam and said not to call him and tell him that it was not working for at least 3 weeks.  It had been more than 3 weeks and it seemed that the magic medication had worked up until now.  After a few questions about when it hurts, where it hurts, and how it hurts he gave me an assignment.  This is one of his favorite things to do.  He gave me an assignment to read an article on sleep and to visit http://COPDfoundation.org and so here we are advocating for people with COPD.

My assignment was to look up stretches and exercises to do for bursitis of the hips.  I am to do these exercises 2 to 3 times a day or any time that the pain returns.  I must tell you that it was like magic.  Yes, the stretches worked, and I liked doing them because they were Yoga poses that I already knew how to do except for one and I soon mastered it.

Shortly after being diagnosed with COPD, I developed this terrible pain in the right side of my neck.  That session ended with him printing out and giving me a series of exercises for my neck that I still perform 3 times a week as opposed to 3 times a day which I did at the start.

Oh, you wonder why the title?  Well, I had been doing quite well following the saving spoons schedule of resting on Friday and being highly active and achieving many tasks the remainder of the days.  The pain made the rest on Friday easy, but I could not continue my Saturday routine, thus the call to my doctor.  It was pain and not fatigue that caused me to make the call.  I will have to say that the elimination of the pain has also eliminated the fatigue thus far.  The saving spoons experiment is still on.