I just got back from having a nice lady do an Ultrasound scan of the arteries in both my legs. However, I won’t know the full results of any of these damn tests I’m having to go through until I get to the last level of this Medical Test Hell and meet The Final Boss, the Cardiologist.
In the mean time, the pretty young thing today did answer my question if she had found something in my left leg after I noticing her running the Ultrasound gizmo back and forth over my left side inner thigh more than once.
I asked her if she had found something there and she said yes.
She said there was one artery in my upper thigh that didn’t seem to have a lot of blood flow but that there was another one there trying to make up for it.
Why is this good news?
Because a couple days ago I was doing some research on all this crap and I found a Youtube showing this new technique of them being able to install small stents in multiple places inside the same artery where they bend behind the knee. Apparently clogged arteries behind the knee are very troublesome because the flexing pinches off the stents and the stents themselves can cause the artery to crack when it bends.
So if the blockage up in my thigh requires a stent, that’s not as bad as having one behind the knee.
She didn’t say much about the other leg but that’s not the one giving me so much grief anyway.
I have also been experiencing some numbness in some of the toes and upper half of my left foot for the last week at least. I’m pretty sure that is nerve related and not a circulation problem because there isn’t any discoloring and it doesn’t seem to be affected by foot elevation.
I let the Doc know about that today and told her that we can discuss it next week at my next appointment.
She said that was fine.
Shit seems to be coming apart at the seams quite rapidly lately.
Oh Joy.
It is what it is and all I can do is what I can do.
And that is exactly what I am going to do, until I can’t do it anymore.
I am doing my damndest to not let any of this get me down and depressed.
For that way lies madness and I been there before.
I have been so confused with all this medical crap going on and the appointments, questions and directions that I can’t keep up apparently. Even with this My Chart website they have that is supposed to keep all this crap straight, I see I still managed to get myself sideways today.
I knew I had an appointment for something today but I just discovered that I screwed up right nicely.
I thought I had an appointment for eyeball X-Rays at 10 A.M. to see if there is any metal in them before having an MRI.
Uhh, NOPE.
That’s on the 16th.
I have a 1 P.M. appointment for an Ultrasound.
So I scheduled a couple hours off with Sick Time instead of the whole day like I thought I did and now I get to screw around until Noon before heading out and will have to get my Time Off fixed for today when I get to work tomorrow.
I just texted the guy I work with who is kinda my boss but doesn’t have nor want the title and bullshit that goes with it to let him know I screwed up.
He replied that I am so confused because I haven’t been getting enough sleep.
I asked him what is this sleep thing he speaks of.
Just like the reason I am writing if for in the first place.
If you are new here or don’t know me very well then you might not know that I am a stubborn sonofabitch.
Hard Headed even.
I’m pretty sure I come by it naturally but I have honed that trait over the many years through the very act of survival.
About three, maybe even four years ago I started noticing that I was not able to push the old lawnmower around the yard without having to stop and take a breather before I got finished with it.
I put it down to getting old, smoking for fifty years and didn’t think too much more about it.
The jobs I have had for the last thirty odd years have had me pounding around on concrete and steel grating all day and it got to the point I would have to stop and take a breather when hoofing it across the plant too.
I blew out a disc in my lower back when I was 20 years old trying to move a piece of Natural Gas pipeline on the deck of a barge.
4 inches around with 1 inch thick walls and about 20 feet long, all I was trying to do was pick up one end enough to stick something under it.
At the time I knew I had strained it but didn’t know I had blown it out. Young, dumb and full of cum ya know.
I lived in misery for five years and went to at least a dozen doctors, almost all of whom came to the conclusion that I was just lazy and didn’t want to work because I could bend over and touch my toes without difficulty. Until the last one, an old guy and a back surgeon who took one look at the same X-rays the rest of them did, said “What’s wrong with these guys?” and immediately scheduled me for a lower back fusion two weeks later. This was in San Francisco in 1985.
The issue was my upper body weight was pushing down on that blown out disc and pinching a nerve.
Flexibility wasn’t the issue but those asshole doctors all used that same data to say I was lazy.
He did the Slice and Dice, took a hunk of bone out of my pelvis, broke it into little pieces and then took the blown out part of the disc out and stacked the bone chips on either side of the bottom vertebrae and sewed me back up.
It was supposed to knit together over a two year period like a broken bone and fuse together.
Two days later, in the hospital, they came and measured me for a custom leather and aluminum rod back brace that had about twenty laces and belts on it that I had to wear for two years also.
They brought it in the next day, made me put it on to check the fit and then left.
I still have that brace, back then it cost $500.
I was on the 3rd floor in the back of the hospital in San Francisco, you know, the city that has those hills that are world famous?
On the 3rd day in the hospital, after a major 5 hour back surgery, I found my clothes, put them on, put the back brace on, unhooked the IV and snuck out of the room when no one was looking. There was an elevator right around the corner so I got in it, went down to the ground level and walked out of a side door of the hospital.
I went down the street, hooked a right and started hoofing it 3 blocks up one of those steep assed hills until I found a grocery store.
I went in, snagged some donuts, Hostess Ho Ho’s, you could buy pre mixed drinks in a can at the time so I bought 3 large Screw Drivers, and then hit a cigarette machine and bought 3 packs of Marlboro’s.
It was comical as hell to watch me try to bend down and get those smokes out of that machine with that back brace on, I basically had to get down on my knees to reach in there.
I snagged up my treasures, hobbled back down the hill, and walked back into the hospital.
I found an elevator, went back to the 3rd floor and started heading back to my room.
My mistake was, I went back in the front door of the hospital and had to walk right by the nurses station to get back to my room.
There were three or four of them standing there and when I walked by with my grocery bag full of goodies, they completely lost their shit.
They had been looking all over for my skinny ass.
I kept walking and got back into bed, they proceeded to light my ass up and called the doctor to come see me.
The old guy comes in a half hour later, partly pissed off, partly amazed and kinda laughing about my adventure.
He tells me that most of his patients laid in bed for weeks moaning about the pain and misery they are experiencing and here I am 3 days later up and traipsing around San Francisco like a bloody tourist.
He is a little pissed off that I might have fucked up all the work he did but what’s done is done and he told me no more road trips until I was discharged.
The last time I saw that guy at my final office visit, I told him that some of the symptoms I was having before the surgery were still there and that I was still dealing with a bunch of pain. He looked me right in the eyes and told me that there was noting else that could be done and that I was going to have to learn to live with the pain.
Trust me, I have been doing exactly that for 38 years now.
So there’s that bit of my past and that part of this story.
I have been working as a mechanic for over forty years with a fucked up back.
Everything from hand tools, small engines, cars, trucks, heavy trucks, heavy equipment, Cranes, Dozers, Dredges, Pile Drivers, Gravel Plants, Industrial machinery and things you have never even heard of.
I literally can’t even remember all of the shit I have worked on over the years anymore.
Not to mention over forty motor vehicle wrecks, fights, my nose has been broken 9 times now, I’ve had teeth knocked out a couple times and have had so many concussions that I couldn’t even begin to count them anymore plus just generally tearing my ass up for entertainment purposes.
Hell one time I landed on my head at 45 miles an hour when I High Sided my motorcycle on a twisty road heading into Half Moon Bay when I was drunk. Landed with both arms extended and smacked the side of my head right on the pavement.
Lucky for me I was wearing a helmet because they weren’t mandatory back then.
Some people helped me get the bike back up, I had broken my left wrist and separated my right shoulder too but didn’t know it yet. I got it started and couldn’t squeeze the clutch so I jammed it in gear and speed shifted it into El Grenada where I was living with a buddy.
I pulled into the yard, dumped the bike over, picked myself up and went in the house. My buddy was there and he took me up to the local hospital. I was laying in a bed and could see the nurses desk from where I was laying all messed up.
After a while an older guy and his wife come in and are talking to the nurse and this woman kept looking at me and it started bugging me.
I finally yelled across the room and asked her what the fuck are you looking at?
Pretty soon here they come and they are talking to me and I have no idea who they are at first.
Turns out it was my parents.
You could maybe say I got my bell rung pretty good that time.
So yeah, I may be skinny but I’m a tough little sonofabitch.
Back to the lawnmowing.
Three years ago I would have to stop at least twice to mow the lawn. It isn’t big, takes about twenty minutes with a push mower.
I finally had enough and went on Craigslist and bought a used Self Propelled unit as after fighting with the Wifely Unit several times, she refused to let me get a rider.
Even with that one, I would have to stop and rest.
This condition kept getting worse and worse, then I started having these weird episodes at work where I would be walking across the floor and out of nowhere, I would get this HOT FLASH all the way across my lower back and my freaking legs would try and buckle on me.
That and if I walked too far at one shot, my lower legs would start cramping up. Shin splints and cramps.
The WICKED variety.
This went on and on and on, just getting worse and worse and worse over the last couple of years and all I did was just keep going to work and putting up with the misery.
I’d have to grab ahold of something or bend over and put my hands on my knees until it went away. I have been putting up with the occasional Sciatica for years and the one thing that very few people know about is that one of the nerves in my lower back has been constantly irritated this entire time and that this particular nerve goes directly to my right testicle. If you are a guy and have those, imagine someone has flicked their finger against the back of your right nut all day every day, for forty fucking years.
Yes, eventually you do learn to live with the pain but God Forbid you ever actually take a shot to the nuts.
Face meet ground, knees meet chin and it’s all she wrote for a few minutes.
And people wonder why I can be such a grouchy bastard.
Try living with that shit and be all smiley faced and cheerful every day.
Not Happening.
I did finally put my foot down and buy a riding lawnmower, which has been posted about here in the past.
I love that thing.
So anyway, this lower leg cramping shit has gotten worse and worse and worse in just the last six months, to the point now, that I literally can’t walk more that two hundred feet and my left leg gets the shin splints so bad I HAVE TO STOP and wait until it lets up.
At that point I’m only good for maybe another 50 feet and it does it again.
Since I literally hate doctors after seeing over a hundred of them in my day, I have been quite reluctant to go see one over this but my Brother has this lady doctor that he just loves and he talked her into taking me on as a new patient.
It only took me a year to break down and make the phone call.
She is an Indian lady and I do like her too. Younger and she is on top of her game.
Long story short, after several tests, I have two major issues going on here.
My lower back has degenerated so far over the years that I HAVE SHRUNK TWO AND A HALF INCHES.
I used to be six foot tall and I am now 5′ 9 and a half inches tall.
From L2 to L6 is shot and there are all kinds of nerves getting squeezed on.
The discs have been squeezed to tears, arthritis, bone spurs, the works.
That explains the hot flashes, sciatica and the occasional feeling that someone was pouring ice water down the back of my right leg.
It also probably explains a new symptom that has cropped up lately where the toes and the upper part of my left foot are numb most the time now. Sometimes if I stand too long the whole foot goes numb. That is probably blood flow but even at rest the top of my foot tingles all the time now.
The other issue seems to be what is known as PADS.
Peripheral Artery Disease.
It can happen to your arms, neck or legs and feet,
Basically, the arteries going to BOTH of my legs are blocked.
The left side is way, way worse than the right side but both of them are getting choked off for blood.
Of course the VERY FIRST THING is to hand me a hand full of prescriptions so I get to start taking pills now.
High blood pressure, check.
High cholesterol, check,
Pain, check and check again.
Gabapentin, to calm the irritated nerves down so maybe I can get some sleep.
Ya see, this got so bad that I was waking up two or three times a night and my entire left leg would be asleep and numb, from the hip to my toes.
There would be a weird ache behind my knee like someone was choking off the blood, which is exactly what was happening.
I am having to roll out and sit on the side of the bed until the enough blood would flow so the numbness would go away.
Two or three times a night. On top of everything else, I ain’t getting any sleep either.
So there ya have it.
I’m all fucked up and have been for a few years now.
Lots more tests but I am probably looking at having some Stents put in, depending on where and how bad, maybe multiple stents, so I can get some blood flow back into my legs.
That will hopefully take care of that issue.
My lower back however, is beyond fucked and there isn’t going to be much of anything they can do for it short of plates, screws and putting in artificial discs, which I AM NOT going to subject myself to.
Oh and of course, they are going to crawl up my ass with a rake and demand that I quit smoking. These people have no sense of humor for that shit.
So gazing into the crystal ball, I am seeing that my days of busting my homesick ass wrenching on shit are about to come to a screeching halt.
One way or another.
I have always said that I will go until I can’t go no more and that wall is dead ahead now.
I’m figuring The Good Lord has had me stick around this long for reasons only He would know because I should have been dead twenty times over at least over the shit I have pulled, up to and including have a scared to death old man holding a loaded old German Luger two inches away from my forehead with shaking hands because me and my friends were Tequila drunk and pissing him and his wife off. I was so drunk that I just kept swiping the barrel out of my face with the back of my hand while continuing to argue with the poor old guy.
It’s a miracle he didn’t blow the top of my head off before the cops showed up and took it away from him.
Yeah, I was a crazy asshole for a long time too.
Maybe, just maybe, God still has something for me to do before I check out.
One thing is for sure, I am going to be getting rid of a whole bunch of crap here this Summer and trimming my To Do list down as far as I possibly can.
Now there are a few reasons I didn’t want to write this post, some should be fairly obvious.
But this whole Blog thing is kind of part of my legacy, I have been doing it since 2006 and this is part of my story now whether I like it or not.
I’m not looking for sympathy, and I’m ESPECIALLY not looking for any advice or anything else.
I have more of that than I want already.
I’m just telling it like it is and very slowly limping away to deal with the rest of my life.
Let me update this real quick,
Don’t think for one second that I am done Blogging.
What the hell else do you you think I am going to do?
There are TONS of assholes out there that need tormenting.
I’m just giving you all a snapshot of what’s been going on and what I am going to have to be dealing with here in the near future.
It has been 10 degrees colder than normal around here since last November.
All Winter and now well over a month into “Spring”.
Up until last week the lows at night have stayed into the mid to low 30’s
The highs anywhere from 40 to a little over 50, on a good day.
Rain?
Almost constant.
Then yesterday, BOOM, high 80’s and Sunny.
Ya gotta love it.
It’s supposed to be a gorgeous day today and then go right back to cloudy, cool and wet.
Of course I have family things to do all day and night today so even if I wanted to I can’t get anything done.
Grand daughter’s birthday/ graduation party and then some “Dance” performance I gotta sit through later.
Don’t know how much of that my lower back is going to be able to take but I’m going to give it a shot, she’s off the the most liberal college in Oregon this Summer so this is my last shot at seeing her before she goes over the edge.
I was sitting out front performing my morning ritual of a smoke and coffee a few minutes ago, looking around and listening to the cat whine for attention when I heard a Woodpecker hammering away on a neighbor’s tree somewhere nearby.
The first one this year so far.
The little decorative Cherry tree in the front yard is in full bloom, as is the bigger Sour Cherry tree that very rarely sets any fruit over against the neighbor’s property line.
Ain’t it pretty?
Yeah, it’s pretty, a pretty huge pain in the ass.
It’s been grafted so there are two trees in one and the thing just makes a GIANT mess.
A wind storm a couple years ago almost knocked it over so it has a pretty good lean to it. The next one will finish it.
Those little blossoms eventually fall off and completely cover the front yard and especially the sidewalk leading to the front door right next to the garage.
They pile up in drifts like snow.
It always rains at some point in this process and they stick to EVERYTHING.
The sidewalk, the outside wall of the garage, your feet and even the fucking cat.
The tree is out of control to begin with and needs a severe pruning but the owners refuse to pay to have anything trimmed around here.
Some of the branches are actually rubbing up against the house right at the roof line and will soon start rubbing on the roofing material.
Not my problem.
Those blooms however, are a Huge problem.
They wind up in the house no matter how many times I clean that shit up.
I literally have to get the pressure washer out to get them off the cement.
So yeah, Spring has Sprung and the Ibuprofen will flow right along with it.
