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"Tell me if that feels better..."
Apr. 26th, 2005 10:21 pmEeek! It's not possible! I'm 67% Geek. No way...
I'm over my funk. Yaeah! Da Boy got the last of his stuff (well, okay, so we spotted more stuff after he headed out but Arn and I will deliver it to him when we bring his starter-kit of groceries tomorrow). So there's now an empty room that we're eyeing with wonder and plans. AFTER it gets cleaned and repainted. Some of the splotches on the walls scare me. So that's that in the empty-nest world. Zack called from Vegas last night just to talk - twice. That helped. He's settling in and sounding like he's liking it there. He has big plans and no strain in his voice. This is all good.
I went to the doctors and then the Physical Therapist's and lo and behold, the nerve pinch is not at the spine where the surgery was and everything there is "healing as if God had planned it that way". That was SO good to hear. It seems that my hip is slightly mis-aligned and the fix is a simple series of exercises and (woohoo!) massages to ease it back into alignment and then strengthen the muscles to keep it there. The nerve pinch is coming from the hip bone and muscle mass pinching the nerve between them. It appears that my feeling of "lumbering like a sleepy bear" when I walked wasn't my imagination. The Therapist says I'm limping and I've grown so accustomed to it that *I* didn't know it was un-natural. She believes that it's been a year in developing to this level, which places the trauma squarely in the period when I fell on my left knee and turned it all shades of black and purple and had to be on crutches for a while. I was stubborn and stopped using the crutches 3 weeks before I was supposed to, figuring that if it didn't hurt too much, then it was okay to do that - she says I probably started limping then (of course I did) but didn't notice the damage I was doing over-compensating for the strain - and that's what led to me having trouble getting in and out of my car, kneeling, putting on shoes and socks on that side, and finally irritating the sciatic nerve bad enough to make the leg and hip go numb... which made me limp worse and scared me so bad that I avoided going to the doctor. Didn't want him to tell me I was losing the nerve and would be facing that chair... boy, was I a wuss.
So - my disinclination to exercise by walking everyday? (I tell you, I used up a lot of mental time trying to justify that in my head.) She says it was the best thing I could have avoided. The damage would have been worse and appeared faster, if I had overruled my feelings. Right now, it's little walking, avoid putting on shoes and socks, no kneeling, and no pushing heavy shopping carts or lawn mowers. I can deal with that although I'm having trouble telling myself that I should *want* to do any of that! I had a lesson in how to get in and out of my car and later I get to relearn how to walk if the exercises and massage don't address my gait in the next few weeks.
The truly good news is that it's not some dark degenerative thing that is going to shadow the rest of my life. I had no idea how desperately I feared that and was trying to suppress the fear. The lifting of that alone has made every view of my empty nest, my piles of repair-for-gold-key, make-this-for-a friend, and sew-for-the-bazaar something joyful and challenging rather than crushing and dark. Yeah!
I'm looking forward to getting back to that sewing and doing some Viking-research for a friend. It's all-l-l good...
I'm over my funk. Yaeah! Da Boy got the last of his stuff (well, okay, so we spotted more stuff after he headed out but Arn and I will deliver it to him when we bring his starter-kit of groceries tomorrow). So there's now an empty room that we're eyeing with wonder and plans. AFTER it gets cleaned and repainted. Some of the splotches on the walls scare me. So that's that in the empty-nest world. Zack called from Vegas last night just to talk - twice. That helped. He's settling in and sounding like he's liking it there. He has big plans and no strain in his voice. This is all good.
I went to the doctors and then the Physical Therapist's and lo and behold, the nerve pinch is not at the spine where the surgery was and everything there is "healing as if God had planned it that way". That was SO good to hear. It seems that my hip is slightly mis-aligned and the fix is a simple series of exercises and (woohoo!) massages to ease it back into alignment and then strengthen the muscles to keep it there. The nerve pinch is coming from the hip bone and muscle mass pinching the nerve between them. It appears that my feeling of "lumbering like a sleepy bear" when I walked wasn't my imagination. The Therapist says I'm limping and I've grown so accustomed to it that *I* didn't know it was un-natural. She believes that it's been a year in developing to this level, which places the trauma squarely in the period when I fell on my left knee and turned it all shades of black and purple and had to be on crutches for a while. I was stubborn and stopped using the crutches 3 weeks before I was supposed to, figuring that if it didn't hurt too much, then it was okay to do that - she says I probably started limping then (of course I did) but didn't notice the damage I was doing over-compensating for the strain - and that's what led to me having trouble getting in and out of my car, kneeling, putting on shoes and socks on that side, and finally irritating the sciatic nerve bad enough to make the leg and hip go numb... which made me limp worse and scared me so bad that I avoided going to the doctor. Didn't want him to tell me I was losing the nerve and would be facing that chair... boy, was I a wuss.
So - my disinclination to exercise by walking everyday? (I tell you, I used up a lot of mental time trying to justify that in my head.) She says it was the best thing I could have avoided. The damage would have been worse and appeared faster, if I had overruled my feelings. Right now, it's little walking, avoid putting on shoes and socks, no kneeling, and no pushing heavy shopping carts or lawn mowers. I can deal with that although I'm having trouble telling myself that I should *want* to do any of that! I had a lesson in how to get in and out of my car and later I get to relearn how to walk if the exercises and massage don't address my gait in the next few weeks.
The truly good news is that it's not some dark degenerative thing that is going to shadow the rest of my life. I had no idea how desperately I feared that and was trying to suppress the fear. The lifting of that alone has made every view of my empty nest, my piles of repair-for-gold-key, make-this-for-a friend, and sew-for-the-bazaar something joyful and challenging rather than crushing and dark. Yeah!
I'm looking forward to getting back to that sewing and doing some Viking-research for a friend. It's all-l-l good...
