Nothing Like Pain

There's nothing like real pain to give you a reality check about life, your life, and about the fragility and good or bad fortune of your body. It started about three weeks ago when I felt a sharp pain in the upper right hip. It dissipated but left my right leg numb from just below the knee, down the shin to the toes.

Then I noticed when I went up some stairs the right leg buckled. I realized something wasn't obvious right. But it was similar to last year with the left leg, the pain at the top of the hip, down the leg to the foot. Then it went down the outside of the calf, leaving it numb to the foot. I had to watch walking as I couldn't feel the outside of my left foot.

The numbness this time went right down the front of the shin to the middle toes. I decided it would go away as it did last year in the normal 6+ weeks. But alas it didn't as this last weekend and week through the Independence Day holiday showed. Saturday was the last good day, relatively speaking.

Sunday the episode got very worse but recovered later in the day. Monday was the day it became a full blown severe pain in the right leg and total numbness from the knee to the toes. The doctors found the two disc for the siactic nerve had a moderate bulging but thought the pinch nerve was "down the line" since the pain wasn't in my lower back but just in the leg(s).

Since Sunday I've been lying on an air mattress since it's the only position where there is little if any pain. By today the pain has dimished to only the area with the numbness, which is the knee, shin and foot/toes. My knee has no response to the reflex test. Yes, totally numb, and the surrounding muscles hurt from compensating or not working.

So that's why nothing is new in a week. I couldn't sit until I found a way to kneel with two pillows in a chair to sit here now, and the pain is bearable. I can only walk for a few minutes before the leg hurts but then the pain stablizes where I can limp around. I have an appointment next week after this week's visit to the local urgent care clinic.

After that it will be specialist(s) to see what, if anything, can be done to overcome what is initially diagnosed as degenerative disc disease. Last year it took 6 weeks to fade away. This looks longer without some medical intervention. It's worse and more widespread.

Today I went to Office Depot and replaced my old style wood banker's chair with a lumbar support one and am back in front of the computer. The pain is minimal but the numbness hasn't changed. In the end, it's the story of just one's genetics with your spine and back muscles, how you work and live, and how you take care of them.

As they say, nothing like a little pain to remind you of yourself.

Father's Day

It's coming, and although my father passed away at home in early November 1994, I've never really liked this day for one reason expressed as a question? Why should you thank your father who has never said the three words every child likes and wants to hear from them, "I love you."?

He never said it to me, so why should I recognize the only thing he gave me was being born? He once told me I wasn't planned or wanted, so why should I thank him for a life of neglect? Not long after I graduated high school he told me, "Son, I want you to have a life, just don't have it here.", so why does he deserve my respect?

Only later in life did I learn he did to me what his father did to him. That's his issue with his father, so why is it an excuse for his actions with me? Why do I deserve his hate for his father now expressed as my father? Why does he deserve my love for just wanting three words I never heard?

Bucket List

I had a bucket list. Now if I can find that damn bucket. Wait, maybe it was the trash can and I emptied it.

Doing Nothing

Well, not really doing nothing as you can't actually do nothing. You are doing something even if you're just being a couch potato, but then that muddies the distinction between being and doing, and while some like to distinguish between the two, it's just a semantic argument as being defines what you do and doing reflects who you are.

Ok, enuf philosophy. My point? Well, as you may know, or not know or care, I have both a Website with a Mt. Rainier NP photography guide and a small, personal photography business, which itself is just a legal entity than a business. I got it to sell photo cards, prints, and work with clients when that ever happens. Kinda' covering my legal butt.

Anyway, the point here is that when spring comes and the weather is forecast for a nice, sunny week with temperatures in the 60's, I just to just putter at small things, the list of things to do which has accumulated over the winter with promises to do when the times comes around or the motivation moves me.

And that's what this week is planned. There are no trips, no appointments, no visitors or clients, just me and the home not doing much beyond what I see is interesting to do, like work on the plants on the deck, take naps, read and whatever else comes into view. Nothing like doing nothing on nice days.

CCR & Lodi

Creedence Clearwater Revival wrote a song Lodi, where there's the lines,

"Ran out of time and money,
looks like they took my friends.
Oh ! Lord, I'm stuck in Lodi again."

Ok, I have never been a musician or anything anywhere close. So why the song?

Well, on May 1, 1971, Linda and I were living in a small house in North Highlands, north of McClellan Air Force Base north of Sacramento, and hitchhiked to and from a Judy Collins concert in the Stockton city Civic Auditorium. It was a great concert as it was on her birthday and she gave a great concert with just a piano accompanist.

We got a ride all the way there from a friend who was driving to LA and it was only a few miles off his way on highway 99. After the concert we walked and hitchhiked to the intersection with highway 99 north to Sacramento. It wasn't long, being near midnight to get a ride north, but the four kids who gave us a ride was only going to a house east of Lodi.

They dropped us off at the on/off ramp with highway 99 on the east side of Lodi. Well, it was just after midnight, and being Saturday night we pretty much expected to catch a ride north reasonably quickly. Well, it was not to be as no cars came and around 2 am, it began to rain.

We didn't bring anything for the rain as it was California in May, and so we stood there. There was nothing within walking distance to get out of the rain or just sit and wait for awhile. This was 1971 and the on/off ramp was in the boondocks and the only road was west to Lodi and east into the darkness and rural country.

About 4 am the same group of kids drove by going home south, but then they saw us and decided to give us a ride to the first major intersection in south Sacramento where there were typical businesses, gas station, coffee shop, etc., all open. There we got something to eat and talked someone going north on highway 99 to Interstate 80 and to Auburn to give us a ride.

They dropped us off at the off-ramp at Watt Ave, and from there it was just a ride north to the rural countryside to our home sometime around 10 am. For many years it was always a memorable experience, the concert on Judy's birthday and the long trip home.

And yes, we were stuck in Lodi, only once but once is enough in Lodi.