Day 198, Year 8: Day Trip to Boston
Date: Monday, May 20, 2013
Weather: Foggy Early and Late, Sunny In Between, High Temp 70’s F
Location: Eel Pond, Woods Hole, Massachusetts
Today it was my turn to make a trip to Mass General. I’ve been struggling with pain in my upper left arm for the past four and a half months due to a herniated disc in the neck area. Thankfully an activator-type chiropractor in North Myrtle Beach was able to give me some relief from the pain and right now my neck feels ‘almost’ normal—but not quite. From my internet research, I thought I knew what the specialist in Mass General’s Spine Center was going to tell me, but I wanted to hear it directly. Dr. Cha first wanted to hear about the injury to my neck 40 years ago. I tried to get away with telling him a heavy object hit me in the forehead and forced my head backwards to a point where I thought my neck was going to break—then I dove and let the heavy object land on my back. But, no. He wanted to know more. He wanted to know what the heavy object was and I had go into more detail explaining that it was half of a dead pig! I didn’t tell him that the name of the dead pig was Dolly Parton. I thought the dead pig story was enough all by itself. He actually chimed in and offered that of course we had hung the pig in a tree to let it bleed out. Enough. The bottom line is that the injury has come back to bite me years later by inviting arthritis to start its degradation thing more aggressively in this area of my spine earlier than I would hope. The options for treatment range from acupuncture to surgery, but Dr. Cha suggested that I might want to try physical therapy and continue seeing an activator-type chiropractor before opting for surgery. He said different things work differently for different people, so whatever I have been doing has been work, and I should continue that. He left the injection of a steroid in the neck area up to me, but I decided to wait and try adding the physical therapy first and see what that does. Eventually, I will probably have to have the surgery, but we’ll put that off as long as the severe pain doesn’t return. The surgery is a one day in, out the next day affair, if all goes well, but that is always the caveat—if all goes well. So I’m happy to keep trying other things and wait and have the surgery as a last resort.
Tomorrow we will deal with the car. The place that installed the new steering parts last year will install a new power steering pump—and if all goes well (sound familiar), we’ll have the car back tomorrow night. But it is an old car and there could be other problems, but one way or another, we need the car back by Thursday morning because Jonah is going to have surgery to put tubes in his ears and we need more than one car to get everyone where they need to be and still have a car at the hospital to bring Jonah home. So on goes the story.
