Day 159, Year 8: Pain in the Neck
Date: Thursday, April 11, 2013
Weather: Winds S 15-18; Partly Sunny; Temp in the High 70’s F
Location: Lightkeepers Marina in Coquina Harbor, Little River, SC
I now know that I’d much rather be a ‘pain in the neck’ than have a ‘pain in the neck’, but the unfortunate truth is that I have had pain in my neck, shoulder, and upper left arm since early January. We returned here from Boston on January 8th and something I did on that plane trip triggered problems stemming from a neck injury I sustained in the early 1980’s. I have been to a regular physician, an orthopedic doctor, and a chiropractor. I have had x-rays and an MRI and today I finally heard from the orthopedic doctor that I have multiple problems in my neck. Well, I knew that, but the news was worse than I had hoped. I not only have three herniated discs but I also have arthritis. Yuck! It’s this old age thing again. And all of my problems can be traced back to Dolly Parton. When we were in our ‘back to the land’ days in West Virginia, we raised two pigs and named them Waylon Jennings and Dolly Parton. These cute little pigs grew and grew and it was time to slaughter them. Waylon went like a gentleman, but Dolly didn’t go so easily. After you slaughter a hog, you have to cut them in half down the spine and hang them by their hind legs to cool out. You can then be your own butcher and cut the meat into usable pieces or you can take it to a professional butcher. We opted for the latter so we hung dolly from a tree and came back later to lower her and take her to the butcher. Since Dolly was so heavy, we opted for Mark to lift one half while I lowered the other. I made sure I had a clean sheet to wrap her in so she didn’t get dirty when I lowered her to the ground. But when Mark lifted, instead of lowering gently as Waylon had done, half of Dolly’s weight came flying at my forehead. My neck went back as far as I could let it before I thought it would break. I finally had the presence of mind to tuck my head and dive, letting her fall on top of me. I fell to the ground with the sheet falling on top of me and then Dolly on top of that. Mark lifted the sheet and said quietly, “Are you alive?” At the time we laughed, but I have known since then that the neck injury would come back to haunt me and now it has. What I have right now is a pinched nerve that causes excruciating pain when I sit. So I’m fine all day as long as I walk or work standing up. When evening comes, however, and I want to sit down, the pain can be almost unbearable. Multiple trips to the chiropractor have helped in that I no longer have the pain all day long. I really don’t want to go down the drug or surgery route unless I absolutely have to, so we continue to look for other solutions. The orthopedic doctor here is referring me to a physical therapist who can show me how to do exercises that might help. Then as soon as we get back to the Cape, I’m hoping to do two things. The first will be to go to Concord, New Hampshire, to a chiropractor there who, in my opinion, can perform miracles. The second will be to get a referral to Mass General Hospital’s Spine Service. In the meantime, I will keep doing what I’ve been doing for the past three months. I am a bit concerned about the trip north, so we’re not sure what we are going to do about that. I had so hoped that we would be able to go outside and sail all the way home, but Mark has yet to see a time when going around Cape Hatteras has looked safe. If that doesn’t change, it means we will have to do the Intracoastal Waterway and that means hand steering all day every day. I might be fine as long as I’m standing and steering, or I might not. If not we would have to do shorter days and it could a month to get home! Outside it is only two days from here to the Chesapeake, but inside doing the Intracoastal took us eight days. The days were shorter in November, so tomorrow we will study the route and see just how long it will take us with longer days on our side. One way or another, a week or so from today we could be headed north.
Patsy is doing so much better and Mark, Joe, and I spent another afternoon planting in the backyard. It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow, so we wanted to get the planning done in time to benefit from the rain. Tomorrow we’ll use that rainy day to do inside house cleaning and trip planning for the cruise north.
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| 130411 Day 159 South Carolina, USA–Planting and Birds |
