Seven Seconds
Seven seconds. That’s all it takes. Seven seconds. From the moment I put my right arm on my desk it take seven seconds for the numbness and the pins and needles to take over. From my shoulder all the way to my finger tips. My hand and fingers along with my forearm get the honor of having the pins and needles. My bicep gets the numbness, my shoulder, well, that just feels like someone is stabbing it with a heated dull spear. This is not the only activity that affects me like this, however; it is the one that has the quickest results.
I have stenosis. In two spots on my spine. One in my neck and one in my lower back. I’ve had it for years and I’ve dealt with it. I’ve put off surgery because I’ve seen people not come out of it in better condition than when they went into it. My condition is getting worse.
Hell, just standing around doing nothing can cause one or both of my arms to go out. I could be walking down the street and boom, my right arm just refuses to be a part of my body. Now, normally this only lasts for a minute or two and then it comes right back. Hell, I can usually tell when an episode is about to hit. Then I start twisting my neck, tapping my fingertips to my thumb back and forth repeatedly, roll my shoulder, you know, fight in the only way I can to try and forestall the inevitable. This sometimes works. Most of the time it does not.
And these are the good days.
The bad days.
Hoo, boy, the bad days… Let me tell you about those.
The pain is constant. Its an ever present being in my life. It is there when I wake up, when I shower, when I dress, when I ride to work, when I work, when I eat, when I watch tv. when I go to sleep, while I sleep, the pain is there. Always. There is no escape from the pain. I can usually deal with it. But on the bad days… on the bad days there is no dealing with the pain.
The best way to describe it is like this;
Imagine you are being hugged, squeezed, hard and there is no escape from it. You can’t run from it. You can’t hide from it, you can’t take enough pills to dull the pain. The pain won’t let you sleep. The pain won’t let you eat. The pain won’t let you think. There is nothing but pain. It is not overwhelming. It is not excruciating. It is just all penetrative. All encompassing. It is pure misery.
To top it all off, there is limited movement in my arm. I can’t fully rotate it, and if someone offered me a million dollars to throw a football or do a proper jumping jack, just one mind you, I couldn’t do it.
What are my doctors doing about all this you might ask? Well, I’ll tell you what they told me… “We are going to continue to monitor the situation.”
How’s that for a kick in the teeth?
Well, I’m going to wrap this up, just writing these five hundred plus words has taken a lot longer than it normally would, which is one of the reasons why I have not written a blog in quite some time. Or written much of anything to tell you the truth. In my mind I’ve written volumes. Novels, short stories, blogs and poems. In a few days, I’ll be calling a surgeon, going to have a little chat with him or her. See what sort of life altering options they may have.
Happy Memorial day to you all.
