Scattered Thoughts . . .

A fter my spinal problems and walking problems on Tuesday, I thought I was doing fairly well now.  I've been walking around the house with only mild difficulty and relatively mild pain which is a great improvement over my experiences on Tuesday and the excruciating pain in the weeks prior to Tuesday.  That was great.  Then, this morning, I attempted to walk out to the mailbox... Inside our house, everything is on one level.  Plus, the house is very small so I don't have far to walk while inside the house.  We do, however, have one step off a small deck at our side door.  When I stepped off that one step, my right leg buckled under me and I almost ended up on the ground.  Then, I had one more step to traverse about eight feet later...  the same thing happened and I almost ended up lying on the ground.  From this point on, the ground was unlevel and I continued having problems keeping my right leg underneath me holding my body weight.  Clearly, this new spinal inflammation is not

T he pain from my spine and down my right leg that has been keeping me couchbound over the past couple of weeks is slowly improving but I am still mostly couchbound.   I've managed to wander the house for very short periods today.  I even was able to sit at the piano for very short sessions last night and today.  Almost all of my days, however, are still spent on the couch swapping out ice packs.   I managed to stay in bed for eight hours last night.  I eventually got up at 5am so I could take my morning dose of medications and put some ice on my spine.   Late last night, I switched to taking Dual Action Advil and then I took it once this morning.  It is clear to me that this stuff is only a fraction as good as Aleve for me.  I don't think I'll be use the Advil again.  That was a complete waste of money and it cost me a bit in pain.  I'll be going back to Aleve with my bedtime dose of medications.   This evening, I was able to feel around along my spine to figure out th

Wow...  it was impossible to get comfortable enough to sleep last night.  My spinal injuries were painfully and debilitatingly inflamed after all of yesterday's yardwork.  I'd say the pain was in the 8-10 range on the 10 point pain scale.  At times, the good times, the pain was only an 8.  Other times, like when I try to move, the pain was pegged at around 10 and would buckle me at the knees.   Sleeping was difficult, at best.  For a long while, I simply couldn't sleep.  I eventually found a position or two that allowed a few minutes of sleep before I would need to change positions to the other position.  This wasn't until the wee hours of the morning though.  I actually thought about just getting up out of bed around this time.  It was around 5am and, typically, I would have no problem with that.  This time, however, I was thinking that if I'm finding bed extremely painful, then the couch wouldn't be any better.  Actually, sitting on the couch before we went to

Whenever friends and family see me, they invariably ask the standard question, "How are you?" More often than not, I respond with an "Okay..." and a bob of the head.  The real answer, however, is that I am never okay by a healthy person's standards. The truth is, "okay" to me simply means that I am well enough to be out and about with only a moderate amount of pain. It means I am well enough to be standing upright and talking. It means my health is currently stable enough that I am not needing to stay within ten feet of an available bathroom because I'm going to be sick at any moment. It means I prepared to be out and about by taking extra medications and foregoing all other activities so I would have the energy to be out and about at this moment in time. This is "okay" to me. "Okay" for me means I can attempt to accomplish some household chores which will always result in me being "less than okay".  "Okay&q

Sheila and I came back home from the Amherst Railway Society's train show with a cold. I always need some time to recover after any trip because of my spinal injuries and mostly due to my illness... Systemic Mastocytosis. Needing some time to recover is no surprise but having a cold on top of my usual need for recovery only compounds the problem. That being said, compared to my usual recoveries after trips, this cold so far has been rather 'mild' for me. Sheila is feeling well enough to be back at work today but my cold is still lingering... clogged head, runny nose, and painful swollen lymph nodes. Of course, whenever I run down my health since procuring this insidious illness, I experience these symptoms to some extent.... some times worse than others. Since Sheila has this cold at the same time that I'm experiencing these symptoms, I'm assuming that I'm also fighting off this bug in addition to trying to recover after wearing down my health.   My spinal i