What to do about sore muscles: Safety related (?)

[C-10 simplex]

i think this qualifies as safety related. Also, i'm not nessesarily saying this is what to do when you have sore muscles---especially so. But more of a question/discussion as to what to do.


As you may or may not know from another thread, i had to replace a starter motor. If you are not used to "overhead" kind of work, this can really make your arms tired.

In addition in my particular case:

a) 4 cyl starters weigh about the same as a stock small block/big block starter.

b) the area is very tight---thus more time, MUCH more time, spent working overhead. It literally took all day. (front wheel drive)

c) i did not carefully check the new one against the old, therefore i had to take the new one off after i installed it in order to put pieces from the old one on the new one

Anyways, after finishing my right arm was killing me---i couldn't do anything but lie down and watch tv, but really i could not do that either because i had to close my eyes because the pain was really THAT bad. i was literally virtually un-functioning.

i decided to try ice, because i had no bengay and it was a little too late(in my opinion) to go to the drugstore (despite they're being open 24 hours). This seemed to help a little and only temporarily.

i then decided, and this probably wasn't right, to use a pill for pain prescribed to me by my orthodontist for when i got a root canal 2 summers ago. i still had it in the cabinet. It contained, among other substances, acetomenaphen (sp?) probably in higher doses than regular, over-the-counter sleep medicine.
i know this probably wasn't right(taking prescriptions for uses not prescribed for) but i figured that this would not be harmful since it's just pain medicine and really i was in SERIOUS pain.

i was worried that i wasn't going to sleep very well, but i did ok considering the circumstances----i think the pain medicine was the only thing that really made sleep resembling anything close to normal normal possible last night.

My arm is ok now.