To Date…
Mark Twain said that the reports of his death were greatly exaggerated. And if anyone has actually read this blog in the recent past, and wondered if my lack of new posts meant anything cosmic, it hasn’t. The lack of new posts has meant nothing more than I have been 1) swamped with work, 2) swamped with medical appointments and, on occasion, 3) swamped with pain. All of these swampings, bring to mind the old aphorism, that “When you are up to your ass in alligators, it is hard to remember you came to drain the swamp.”
Well, the swamping with work is a positive thing as it eventually gets money in my pocket. Nonetheless, I normally agree with the sentiments of the late Douglas Adams about due dates and such. Adams said, “I love deadlines. I like the whooshing sound they make as they fly by.” However, this time I gave my word to my editor that I would get some work to him by a deadline, and given that I had gotten into the sloppy habit of letting such deadlines whoosh by on a pretty regular basis, I decided that I would startle the bejabbers out of him by finishing a couple of manuscripts on time. Well, that was a nice thought, and I did meet the deadlines, but by God’s 3rd left testicle, this was a lot harder than I anticipated it would be. I think my muse did not appreciate being under the gun, so for a few days, she enjoyed being petulant and not providing her usual help.
The frequency of the medical appointments is dropping back to a more normal level, and soon – next Thursday – I will go for an epidural injection of cortisone in the spaces between some of my neck vertebrae with the hope and anticipation that this will result in a cessation of at least some of the most serious pain. I went for a new MRI about three weeks ago, and – Surprise, Surprise – NOT– it showed that there has been more degradation of parts of my cervical and upper thoracic spine. However, also actually surprisingly, it indicated that overall, the neck region wasn’t as bad as it seemed to me. My previous MRI, done several years ago, was done in an “open” MRI machine. These open MRI machines are MRI machines where the big doughnut magnets don’t go all the way around you. As a result you are not in a tube, and claustrophobes can have their MRI without going all wiggly for being in a tiny tube. I am not claustrophobic, and I used the open machine in my previous MRI because it was available sooner, and I wanted treatment sooner than later. However, I found out that such open machines really suck at providing good images of some injuries, including my spinal injuries. In my case, it made a couple of problems appear worse than they were. So, getting the newer MRI was a really good thing. Some degradation was worse than it had been, and some was better. The net result was a push, I guess. Hopefully, these upcoming epidural injections will work, ‘cause if they don’t, surgery is the only remaining option.
So, anyway, all my medical problems are getting cleared up, and so are my wife’s, so we are getting back on an even keel for the first time in several years, or so it seems. But, this also means that I/we have a lot of catch up stuff to do. In my case, my office/lab is truly a mess, and I will have to dedicate a portion of next week to cleaning it up. And today and tomorrow I am working on power washing our deck so that it will be clean before I can add the weatherproofing oil that I have put off doing for a couple of years. NOT a good idea, that one.
All-in-all I have a lot of work to do, and included in that will be some more informative bloggings, I hope.
Until then…
Cheers,
Ron
