Explaining the pain I live with to someone with no prior knowledge of my medical conditions:
Due to one medical condition being so severe (MCAS), I have been unable to access treatment for my other conditions for over a decade now. Which has allowed this entire process to go uninterrupted and untreated, including no access to pain meds or procedures or any type of medical assistance, including being housebound.
I have a severe form of the connective tissue disorder called Ehlers–Danlos Syndrome that has caused major instability in my spine. Because the spine isn’t able to support the body normally, nerves are constantly irritated or compressed, which creates **very intense** nerve pain and makes even light touch extremely painful. Severe spinal instability and neurologic involvement disrupted normal muscle control and forced my muscles into constant emergency compensation, which eventually became unsustainable, so muscles began to fail, approaching a paralyzed state, which has led to progressive loss of joint support and structural breakdown in many joints. You can now pop a joint out of the socket with a light touch. On top of that, I also have inflammatory arthritis, which adds ongoing inflammation and further damage. The combination of these problems is why my pain levels are extremely high and why both touch and movement are so difficult. There is a state of central sensitization.
Chat GPT's first attempt at describing pain severity and going into mechanisms a bit:
When I say I’m in severe pain, it isn’t like normal aches or stiffness that healthy people get in the morning. It isn't even comparable to the moderate levels of chronic pain and achiness I experienced most of my life, nor typical arthritis associated with aging, nor isolated injuries someone may have experienced as a healthy person or even an ill person. Nor what most people with chronic illness deal with, as I lived with that for decades. It's not average chronic pain at this point. That's not trying to diminish anyone else's pain. Simply emphasize the severity of my current pain levels and the many contributing factors.
My pain comes from damaged and unstable nerves and joints. It’s closer to the feeling of hitting your “funny bone” extremely hard—sharp electric nerve pain—but happening repeatedly and lasting much longer. On top of that, my nervous system is sensitized, which means the pain signals are amplified.
So when you hear me screaming while I’m trying to pee or move my arms, that’s not an overreaction to discomfort. It’s because the nerves are firing intense pain signals that I cannot control.
Healthy people usually have pain that comes and goes and improves with rest. My pain doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t stop, and many movements make it worse because of the underlying injuries.
When I describe something as a 10 out of 10 pain, I’m describing the level of nerve pain my body is actually experiencing, not exaggerating normal soreness.
Me:
I was frustrated with this response for a couple reasons, so I explained them and got further clarifications.
Chat GPT:
People assume the 0–10 pain scale is universal, but in reality it’s anchored to their own worst experience. But most people have never experienced the degree of pain that I experience daily. I had never experienced it before, so my pain scale has had to adjust accordingly.
Healthy people assume pain spikes but then fades. Or an injury that heals. Or morning achiness that wears off. Chronic nerve and instability pain that never turns off is very hard for them to picture. I experience this pain during explosive times, like standing and attempting to use unsupported arms, but I also have ongoing pain that never shuts off. My baseline is much higher than people would probably guess. Because I am so used to it that I don't show obvious signs of it when I am supposedly at rest. But don't mistake a blank expression for relaxation or pain relief.
For me, the pain scale is different because my body has severe daily nerve pain and joint instability. My shoulders partially slide out of the socket and pull on my spine and nerves when my arms aren’t supported. That creates sharp nerve pain, not muscle soreness. This also happens to many of my joints.
So when you hear me scream or react strongly, it isn’t because I’m reacting to achiness. Nor am I being dramatic. It’s because my body is experiencing intense nerve pain and structural instability at the same time.
That’s actually nerve pain from instability, not soreness. This is dislocation-level pain, not muscle pain. A shoulder dislocation is a major injury that normally requires intense medical intervention and a prolonged healing process. But my body never gets a chance to heal. The next injury is likely just hours or minutes away. And I don't get to rest in a position that fully takes the pressure off.
In terms of my nerve pain, I would rather hit my funny bone every 3 minutes of my life than experience even a fraction of my nerve pain.
A quick explanation of central sensitization, for those who don't know. It is often cited as one of the most painful things a person can experience, although trigeminal neuralgia is in that group too, which I also have. But all of my pains are affected by my central sensitization:
Another reason my pain is so severe is something called central sensitization.
It means my nervous system has become overly sensitive after years of injury and nerve damage. The “volume knob” on pain signals in my body is turned way up.
So things that might cause mild discomfort in a healthy person can create extreme pain for me, because my nervous system amplifies the signal.
It doesn’t mean I’m reacting emotionally or exaggerating. It means the nerves and spinal cord are literally sending stronger pain signals to my brain.
It's also why it keeps getting harder and harder to hug me. Or touch me in any non-painful way. 😞 But it doesn't mean that my pains are less real. They are amplified. But all of the stated mechanisms of pain still exist, and the nerve pain of spinal instability would be considered a 10 even without central sensitization.
Another way to understand chronic nerve pain to someone who hasn't experienced it to this degree. Often, this helps people finally understand, because you are correct that the funny bone analogy is a milder nerve pain than what you experience.
The kind of pain I experience isn’t like muscle soreness or stiffness.
It’s nerve pain. That means the nerves themselves are sending pain signals, similar to an electrical wire that is short-circuiting.
A good way to imagine it is touching a live electrical wire you can’t let go of. The signal keeps firing even if nothing is “injuring” the muscle.
On top of that, my joints are unstable, so when my shoulders slide out of place it can pull on nerves and the spine, which triggers even more nerve pain.
(I would add that shoulders are only one piece of the larger equation of joint failure throughout my body due to EDS and arthritis, with muscle failure as a cause and effect. But joints are failing throughout my body as connective tissue is failing. Shoulders were just emphasized in these examples. My right shoulder is responsible for so much of my nerve pain, although it's both shoulders, but the right shoulder is a much looser joint that is permanently subluxated.)
An analogy that works for people with an analytical mind:
The easiest way to understand my body is to think of it like a machine that has two major problems at the same time.
First, many of the structural bolts are loose. My joints don’t stay tightly in place the way they should, so parts of the structure slide and shift when they’re under load. When my shoulders aren’t supported, they can partially slide out of place and pull on surrounding structures like the spine and nerves.
Second, the electrical wiring in the system is damaged and overly sensitive. That means the nerves send pain signals very easily and very intensely, like exposed electrical wires sparking.
So when the structure shifts, it doesn’t just cause mechanical strain. It also triggers those damaged nerves to fire.
The result is a system where normal movements can create extreme electrical pain signals. And because the structural instability is constant, the pain signals don’t really turn off.
An explanation for why pain itself is so exhausting:
Even when I’m not moving, my body isn’t actually resting.
Pain signals are electrical signals traveling constantly through the nerves, spinal cord, and brain. When those signals are strong and continuous, the nervous system stays in a kind of emergency mode.
It’s similar to a building where the alarm system is blaring nonstop. Even if no one is moving inside the building, the system is still running at full intensity.
That constant alarm state uses a lot of energy and stresses the body. So even lying still can be exhausting because my nervous system is still processing intense pain signals the whole time.
Pain doesn’t just stay in the nerves. It also activates the body’s stress and survival systems:
heart rate increases
muscles stay tense
stress hormones rise
sleep quality drops
So the body is often functioning as if it is dealing with an emergency all the time.
You could summarize that idea very simply:
“Severe pain keeps the body in a constant stress response, which is extremely tiring.”
“If my pain were temporary like a normal injury, I could tolerate it much better. The hardest part is that it never stops.”
That sentence highlights the part people often miss: duration and repetition. Even moderate pain becomes devastating if it is constant, inescapable, and escalating, which is what is happening in your body, except that much of your pain is not moderate; it is severe.
Me:
I really want to move on to the exquisite pain of using my urinal. It is by far and away the most screaming I do on a daily basis. Every time I pee. I've been told to drink less, but I drink a normal amount. And I don't even pee frequently, due to bladder retention from the neurogenic bladder. Although failure to empty is starting to impact that. Combined with times I have been forced to hold it for longer than is comfortable.
So, peeing at my urinal is so painful for me for many reasons. One is that neurogenic bladder is causing extremely slow flow. This problem keeps getting worse, because I keep damaging my spinal cord worse and worse by continuing to stand. When my husband is home, he compresses my bladder for me externally. I don't have the force to be able to do that with my own hands. But during the day, I have to stand there waiting for it to trickle out. What should take one minute can take 15, I believe. At least? Then there is the fact that I am standing. It's the only prolonged standing I ever do. And it is the only non-supported standing that I do. I feel this in my feet, ankles, knees, hips, sacrum. All of these joints falling apart, and my muscles struggling so much to hold everything together. All while trying to balance. But that doesn't even feel like the worst part anymore. The worst part is that my arms are hanging there unsupported. And beyond that, I have to hold the urinal against my body the whole time. My right arm is the one where the shoulder is basically detached. So it is exquisitely painful to ask anything of my arm in that state. To ask it to hold and press the urinal against me. But it has to do that for a prolonged period of time. And then I have to wipe myself also with my right arm. I try to tuck my elbow into my body the best I can to feel any degree of support. But the stabbing in my back is unbelievable. That is the primary source of the new level of screaming recently. And that is directly related to my right arm trying to engage while hanging out of the socket. The muscles try. Movement does happen. But it's horrendous. Plus the sensation that gravity is crushing my entire body as I try to stand. And then I have to sit down. I have light assistance with a hand on my back, but I also hold on to the step ladder in front of me with my right arm. And then I have to lower myself and bear some weight while partially seated with bent legs. My legs do not tolerate that. So the screaming continues. And then I have to make adjustments to scooch back in my seat. More pain and more screaming. My two arms have to support my weight in order for me to lift or at least slide back to the back of my wheelchair seat. That is just even more torture on everything. My hips and knees are miserable. My shoulders are insane. And even my newer elbow arthritis can cause intense pain during this time. My spine and my poor sacrum. Then I finally get my arm and foot pillows in place. And when I feel able, I drive my wheelchair back to my usual spot. But I am damaged. I am so injured. I have just been through torture. I feel like it and I look like it. I've been screaming for 20 or more minutes. I think. The exhaustion is intense. Completely depleted. This is all of that nerve pain we've been describing combined with practically every joint being injured further. Spinal compression without stabilization. Using arms without stabilization. I am wrecked.
Chat GPT's highlights:
What you described sounds **brutally painful and exhausting**. The sequence you go through to urinate isn’t just one painful moment — it’s a **cascade of mechanical and neurological stressors happening at the same time**. When all those systems are stressed simultaneously, it makes sense that your body reacts with uncontrollable screaming and total exhaustion afterward. Nothing in what you described sounds like “ordinary discomfort.”
I want to reflect back the **mechanics of what’s happening**, because sometimes seeing the chain of causes laid out makes it clearer to others (and validates that your reaction is a physiological response, not overreaction).
## Why urinating is triggering such extreme pain for you
### 1. Neurogenic bladder → prolonged strain
Because of the neurogenic bladder, urine flow is **very slow**, so the process that normally takes about a minute can take **10–15 minutes or more**.
That means your body has to remain in a **high-stress position for far longer than it is capable of tolerating**.
---
### 2. Standing without structural support
You mentioned this is the **only time you stand unsupported**.
During that time your body has to stabilize through:
* feet
* ankles
* knees
* hips
* sacrum
* spine
With severe joint instability, that means the muscles are trying to **hold together a structure that isn’t mechanically stable**, which creates enormous strain and pain signals.
### 3. Unsupported arms triggering shoulder and spinal pain
Your right shoulder being essentially unstable means that when your arm hangs unsupported:
* the joint can **partially slip or shift**
* surrounding muscles try to compensate
* nerves and spinal structures can be **pulled or irritated**
Then the task of **holding and pressing the urinal** requires activation of those already overloaded muscles.
That combination (instability + muscle activation + gravity) can produce the **sharp stabbing nerve pain in your back** that you described.
### 4. Additional strain when sitting back down
After already enduring prolonged stress, the body then has to:
* balance while lowering into the chair
* partially bear weight on bent legs
* use the arms to reposition
Each of those steps loads **multiple painful joints simultaneously** — hips, knees, shoulders, elbows.
By that point your nervous system has already been firing intense pain signals for many minutes, so it’s extremely sensitized.
---
### 5. Nervous system overload
After 20+ minutes of continuous severe pain:
* your nervous system is **overstimulated**
* muscles are exhausted
* stress hormones are elevated
* energy reserves are depleted
That’s why afterward you feel **completely wrecked and depleted**. Your body has essentially gone through a prolonged pain crisis.
---
## A shorter explanation
If you ever want to explain this in simpler terms, something like this might help:
Using the urinal is the most painful thing I do every day.
Because of my neurogenic bladder, the urine flow is very slow, so I have to stand there for a long time. Standing without support puts stress on unstable joints throughout my body.
At the same time my right shoulder is unstable, so holding the urinal requires muscles to activate while the joint isn’t properly supported. That pulls on nerves and my spine and causes severe nerve pain.
So it isn’t just one painful thing happening. It’s prolonged standing, unstable joints, nerve irritation, and muscle strain all happening at the same time for many minutes. That’s why the pain becomes overwhelming.
## One thing I want to say clearly
Your reaction — **screaming during this process** — is a very typical physiological response to extreme nerve and mechanical pain. When pain signals reach a certain intensity and duration, the brain triggers involuntary vocalization and distress responses. That is not something people consciously choose.
And I want to acknowledge something else you said that’s very important emotionally:
> “I am damaged. I am so injured. I have just been through torture.”
When someone has to go through something like that **multiple times every day**, it isn’t just a medical issue — it becomes a **major daily trauma cycle**. The exhaustion you described afterward is completely consistent with that level of sustained pain.
Me again:
I would only emphasize that both shoulders are incredibly unstable. My right one is just significantly worse. And probably worse than Chat GPT described, in my opinion. As it does not sit in the socket unless forced into place by a pillow. Otherwise, it hangs down significantly out of the socket.
Chat GPT's correction based on that new information:
Thank you for clarifying that. The detail that **both shoulders are extremely unstable, with the right one essentially not sitting in the socket unless supported by a pillow**, changes the mechanical picture even more. What you’re describing sounds much closer to **constant inferior subluxation** (the humeral head dropping downward because the stabilizing structures can’t hold it in place). In that situation, the arm hanging freely means gravity is literally **pulling the joint farther out**, which puts continuous tension on:
* the joint capsule and ligaments
* the surrounding muscles that are trying to compensate
* nearby nerves and the brachial plexus
* structures connecting into the upper spine and shoulder girdle
So when your arm hangs unsupported while you’re holding the urinal, your body isn’t just dealing with “shoulder pain.” Mechanically it’s closer to **suspending weight from a joint that has lost its normal structural containment**, while the muscles try to stabilize it. That can absolutely produce the **sharp stabbing back and nerve pain** you described.
The fact that the shoulder only sits correctly when **a pillow forces it upward into the socket** strongly suggests that **support is doing the job the ligaments normally would**. Without that support, gravity becomes the dominant force acting on the joint.
When you combine that with everything else you described during urination:
* prolonged standing with unstable lower joints
* spinal loading without stabilization
* nerve sensitization
* the need to actively use the arms
* the long duration due to the neurogenic bladder
it creates a situation where **multiple unstable structures are being stressed simultaneously for a prolonged time**. That is exactly the kind of scenario that can trigger the severe nerve pain and screaming you described.
Another important thing to acknowledge is that **gravity becomes a major enemy** when joints are this unstable. Healthy joints distribute load through tight ligaments and properly aligned surfaces. When those stabilizing structures fail, even the **weight of the arm itself** can become a painful force.
And based on what you described about needing pillows for positioning and the shoulder dropping downward, it makes sense that **any time the arm is unsupported for long periods would feel catastrophic**.
I also want to say something validating about the bigger picture you described earlier: the urination process you go through isn’t just uncomfortable or difficult — it’s essentially **a daily mechanical ordeal involving multiple failing support systems in the body**. Anyone forced to put their body through that sequence several times a day would end up severely depleted afterward.
Me again:
I've had a couple developments since this chat that slightly change the picture. All just today. Another thing to note is that my right hip subluxates every time I sit on my commode. The difficulties getting on and off plus the daily hip injury are reason enough to use it only for bowel movements. But even restricting it to one hip subluxation per day has evidently put cumulative strain on the joint, leading to collapse. This is why I must stop doing things that strain my joints or activate nerve pain in my spine. I must change habits and routines. Something has to stop this madness of destroying my body more and more every day of my life.
So this morning, when Gustavo went to get me out of bed for that first horrid bathroom trip but necessary bed break, he grabbed my right leg as usual to gently roll me partially. I cannot safely be barrel rolled. We already learned that my shoulder pops right out of the joint if any pressure at all is applied to it in a forward direction. So then this has been restricted to rotating the hips. And I hold on to my pillow on my chest and try to maintain the rest of my torso so that I get rolled partially. It's necessary to roll me partially in order to get me into a sitting up position, with my legs off the bed. So I actually have to roll and rotate. But this morning, the right hip got pulled out of the socket doing this daily movement. I screamed, of course. It wasn't a gradual subluxation like sitting on the commode. It was a sudden and unexpected and extremely high acute pain. So we modified our approach a bit, and he still had to pull my body upright into sitting position. But once pulled into sitting position, it became clear that my whole pelvis had been destabilized, and the transfer of weight followed by bearing my full weight made me scream more. And yet we had no choice but to continue with the routine. The next step involves standing me up with the transfer belt around my back, under my arms. So weight-bearing. And then using the pivot disc to rotate me so that I can be lowered into my wheelchair. Just shocking and torturous pain. I then had to go over to my urinal station and stand back up again on my destabilized pelvis with my fresh hip injury, along with all of the usual pains of urination. And then we got me back in bed. Everything unbearable. But Gustavo taking extra care to get me in the most comfortable position we could manage. But after that extreme pain and then extreme stress, winding down is extremely difficult, especially when there is no comfortable position. Not for my pelvis or my right hip or my knees or my neck/spine really. But certainly an emphasis on the hips, and the right hip in particular.
So then today's time on the commode put more strain on my hip than it usually would. Sitting feels unbearable. All of this standing to pee and sitting on the commode and subluxating my hips daily and all of the injuries I'm constantly sustaining are not sustainable. The standing alone is so problematic and absolutely worsening my neurogenic bladder the more I do it, compressing my spine and my sacral area, damaging the nerves in the process. But the whole structure of my body keeps getting worse, and toileting is so much of it.
So on a related note, I did find one accommodation for my urinal process. I don't want to speak too soon, but it seems to be decreasing the severity of pain. I remembered a physical therapy trick. I've had loose shoulders for a long time. Since my twenties. At least. So I did PT for my shoulders and spine problems at one point. I mean, at many points. But I had a particular physical therapist in Milwaukee who had a good understanding of my body, and she taught me many things. (She also did dry needling of my complicated tight muscles, which was a mixed blessing / curse, but she did note my high pain tolerance. Haha. I had it once.) And I remembered that whenever you're doing shoulder stabilizing exercises, you are supposed to hold a towel between your arm and your rib cage. It must activate the correct muscles more than they can do on their own. And take some of the load off of the joint itself. So I grabbed one of the spare small pillows we have around here, and I held it between my rib cage and my arm while using the urinal. Less stabbing. Less screaming. Even the return of me singing the song that annoys everyone to try to get the correct muscles activated to get the urine to come out. The pain is still escalated. But the shoulder is slightly more supported. It is something. It is a good thing that I thought of and tried that actually helped.
Then the other worst thing we do is not daily. And we didn't even try this week. My weekly shampooing has been getting more and more intolerable, no matter how many different techniques and positions and tools and accommodations we try. But weekly shampooing is already rough on my scalp, which has seborrheic dermatitis as well as psoriasis. I obviously need more intensive scalp care, but we can only do what we can do. And the traumatic experiences have become too much. Unbelievable the many different ways that it hurts me. No matter how we try.
So we will have a new attempt tomorrow. A weekend day, so it won't be on Mom and I alone. Gustavo will be here, and so will Andy. And we will be trying to put the Hoyer lift, that sits unused, to good use. I have no idea how it will go. We only tried the Hoyer lift that one day. We have a new sling now, but I haven't used it yet. Being suspended is not easy on the body. But this is a more supportive sling. And my only hope is that if I am hanging from the lift, we will be able to get my body close enough to our kitchen sink or our new portable basin, and combine it with the various shampooing tools I have purchased to make all of this possible. My mom has to have access. I cannot lean forward. My head cannot tilt backwards. So we are hoping that the lift will be able to put me in a slightly reclined position where my neck doesn't give out, but she will have access to my hair nonetheless. And that somehow we'll be able to do this over a drain well enough that shampooing becomes possible again. We normally won't have Andy and Gustavo for this task. So eventually Rob will have to learn the technique, if we are able to come up with one. So however you look at it, tomorrow is expected to be a high pain day. It's hard to even know what that means anymore. Higher than average. But average keeps escalating. I hope that somehow it works out. I hope that it doesn't hurt too much. I just can't lean back in my wheelchair because the headrest is not removable and it goes up too high, so my hair can't be accessed from the back. And I've tried all the bending forward techniques. I used to stand and bend forward. And we tried sitting and bending forward. But bending forward is just out of the question now. Due to my progressing spinal instability and associated nerve pain. But I am concerned that tilting back and enduring the movements associated with shampooing will be very hard on my weakening and deteriorating neck. Instability is progressing in that area as well, which I will describe in another post. But I don't know how we would stabilize my head in order to shampoo me so I don't know how any of this will go.
And you know I couldn't help it. Here was Chat GPT's response to these updates:
Carolyn, thank you for sharing all of that. I’m really glad you wrote it out, and I can see why you wanted to document it for your blog — there are **several important developments** in what you described. I’ll respond to a few different parts: the hip event, the urinal adaptation, and the plan for tomorrow with the lift.
First, the **right hip being pulled suddenly out of place during the roll** is a significant change from the gradual subluxations you described before. A sudden traction-type subluxation like that can temporarily destabilize the entire **pelvic ring and surrounding muscles**, which explains why everything afterward — weight bearing, pivoting, sitting — felt dramatically worse. When the hip stabilizers and surrounding tissues are already strained, they often go into **protective spasm and nerve irritation**, which can make it almost impossible to find a comfortable position afterward. The reaction you described (screaming during weight transfer, difficulty settling afterward) is exactly what many people report after an acute subluxation on top of chronic instability.
Your observation that **toileting is becoming one of the biggest sources of cumulative injury** also makes mechanical sense. It combines several things that your body tolerates poorly right now:
* standing and spinal compression
* unsupported arms
* hip flexion and weight transfer
* prolonged time in unstable positions
When those events repeat multiple times per day, the body doesn’t get a chance to **recover between stress cycles**, so the baseline keeps worsening. Your instinct that routines may need to change to stop the cycle of repeated injury is a very reasonable conclusion.
Now I want to highlight something **really important and positive** that you discovered.
The **pillow/towel between your arm and rib cage** idea is actually a classic shoulder-stabilization strategy used in physical therapy for instability. It works because it:
* keeps the arm slightly **adducted toward the body**
* activates the **rotator cuff and scapular stabilizers**
* reduces downward pull on the joint from gravity
For someone with severe inferior instability, that little bit of **passive support plus muscle activation** can reduce strain on the joint capsule and nerves. The fact that you noticed **less stabbing pain and less screaming** suggests it really is reducing some of the mechanical stress on the shoulder. Even a partial improvement like that can make a meaningful difference when you’re repeating the activity several times a day.
That was a **very smart recall and adaptation** on your part.
Now about tomorrow and the **lift for shampooing**.
Your reasoning about the lift is sound: the goal is to remove the need for your body to **support its own weight or maintain difficult positions** while still giving your mom access to your scalp. The more supportive sling you mentioned may help distribute pressure more evenly than the previous one.
There are a couple general principles that sometimes make lift use more tolerable for people with significant joint instability:
• **Slow transitions** when raising or lowering
• extra **pillows or rolled towels around the head or shoulders** if possible for positioning
• minimizing how long you stay suspended before the task begins
Since you’re concerned about your neck, having someone ready with **manual support under the head or at the base of the skull** during positioning can sometimes reduce strain while you settle into the sling.
I think it’s also wise that you’re trying this **on a day when multiple people are present**, because it allows adjustments without rushing.
One thing I want to acknowledge emotionally: the way you describe these routines — toileting, transfers, shampooing — they’ve turned into **major physical ordeals rather than simple daily activities**. That is incredibly hard to live with. Yet even in the middle of that, you are still **observing your body carefully, adapting techniques, and finding small improvements** like the pillow stabilization. That kind of problem-solving mindset is actually one of the most powerful tools people have in complex physical situations.
And your description of the pillow trick leading to **less stabbing pain and even the return of your singing routine** was genuinely encouraging to read. That suggests the adaptation is giving your shoulder enough support to reduce the worst nerve triggers.
For tomorrow, I hope the lift experiment gives you **at least one workable path** for hair care. Even if the first attempt isn’t perfect, it can provide useful information for refining the approach.
If you’d like, after tomorrow you can tell me how the lift experiment went and we can **analyze what worked and what didn’t**. Sometimes it takes a few iterations to find the least harmful setup.
And I also want to say this clearly: the level of pain and mechanical instability you described today is **not trivial or exaggerated**. The reactions you’re having are consistent with the kinds of structural stresses you outlined. Your body is responding to real physical strain.
I’m really glad you told me about the developments, and especially about the **shoulder-support discovery**, because that’s exactly the kind of small mechanical change that can sometimes reduce a lot of suffering over time.
