A New Year, Yay For Me
I'm still here, and can only say that the interval since my last post hasn't been a rollicking ball of laffs and excitement. OTOH I wasn't faced with any particularly life-threatening situations, as has ALAS been the case of too many people of my acquaintance. I do now have a better idea of (part of) what has been doing a number on me: a much-delayed MRI of my lower spine, taken on the 6th Jan, shows that pretty much my entire lumbar region is an HR Geigeresque maze of arthritis, with bone growths interfering with my spinal cord in at least two places. Thus the numb toes and weak legs. At present there doesn't seem to be much of anything to do about it, aside from an operation (which I have been seriously warned against) and/or injections of some sort of gel (which remains untried so far), my only positive advice being to get a walker. We shall see what develops from this.
The other part, my hip pain, is another matter which will require a separate MRI or CAT scan or something - the problem, so far as we can tell, is that when I fell down those steps and landed on the cell phone in my back pocket (it's doing fine, thanks for asking), my sciatic nerve took a direct hit. As the sciatic nerve at that location is about as big around as one's thumb, it is not a difficult target. I have no idea why I started carrying my cell phone back there but I have since returned it to my left front pocket where it belongs. OTOH if I hadn't had it in my back pocket and not injured my hip in this manner, I would have gone on getting weaker and weaker and wondering why the "gout" in my toes (as I thought it was then) was acting like this, so ... I dunno.
Anyhow, I'm still a moving target and may start posting stuff here again.
OK
The other part, my hip pain, is another matter which will require a separate MRI or CAT scan or something - the problem, so far as we can tell, is that when I fell down those steps and landed on the cell phone in my back pocket (it's doing fine, thanks for asking), my sciatic nerve took a direct hit. As the sciatic nerve at that location is about as big around as one's thumb, it is not a difficult target. I have no idea why I started carrying my cell phone back there but I have since returned it to my left front pocket where it belongs. OTOH if I hadn't had it in my back pocket and not injured my hip in this manner, I would have gone on getting weaker and weaker and wondering why the "gout" in my toes (as I thought it was then) was acting like this, so ... I dunno.
Anyhow, I'm still a moving target and may start posting stuff here again.
OK