When flying with me please pack your patience !!! Also please make sure my seat on the plane is on the left side of the plane by the window and that the seat adjusts!!! If all these stars align then half the battle is won. Now all I need to do is survive the flight in semi comfort. Which I think we kinda did and we got home to my daughters place safely to “O” the dog that knows us jumping in and out of her car from excitement like a mexican jumping bean. He hasn’t seen us in a year but sure remembers us! He loves my husband more than me as he feeds him ham and cheese all the time. We decided to go for a walk and stretch our legs after the 4hr flight.
We are doing ok on the walk so I put my hand out to touch their new pup “wigglebutt” bum to say hi and she decides to come over to me and say hi too and cuts me off, totally unaware that this is going to have negative implications. Guess what? Day 1 of my vacation I’m flat on my face, when I fell it felt like something had happened in my neck near my surgery site.
I didn’t have time to assess it as everyone was all over me with the are you ok and helping me get up. My answer to them was that fall would have been a lot worse had I not been taped up by my physio before I left!!! As the evening progressed I knew I needed to keep up on the pain meds as per usual when I fall there will be the after effects. My vacation had just begun so what do you do? I woke up in the morning and my knees were sore and bruised. I told my husband and he said what do you expect you just fell but what I didn’t tell him until later on was that I was starting to to twinges of nerve pain. Numbness and tingling in my arms and fingers just like prior to my ACDF C5-C6 surgery. You fake it till you make it or at least you try your best!
When I was taped up by my physio things were sore but because they were in the right places so to speak things were ok. I was able to manage, until day 7 came by and I took the tape off because it was itchy and it needed to come off. I thought I was in pain when the tape was on….well this was a whole new world of pain, the meds I was taking for it were not cutting it and fake it till you make it philosophy was tried but it was becoming increasingly difficult as the days passed. I let my husband finally in on my fears and told him exactly what was going on. One night he was poking me because I was snoring. I told him that it’s the only comfortable position I could be in so I apologized and snored on.
However bad it was, I mustered on because I wanted to see more of the west and it’s beauty.
The hike we went on was quite a challenge. My daughter looked it up on her app for hiking trails and it said something to the fact that someone’s 70-year-old grandpa did this hike with ease. I said, well then it sounds like my kind of hike! Off we went! Firstly I found it really hard to breathe when we were out there, due to the elevation. I’m also a mouth breather so I was dying…… it sounded like I was sucking air through a straw (actually…worse). I am sure my weight didn’t assist me here either. However, on we went! as we walked through a forest that had just the right amount of snowfall on it to look like a scene from Narnia. Mouths agape at the beauty unfolding around us. At one point we had to wondered aloud about the fitness level of the 70 year old grandpa that was on this hike, as we went from one steep incline to the next and were finally ascending from some beautiful sites. Also kudos to the little boy he was maybe 3 or 4 years old that just began the same hike as we were going down his mom enticing him with PB&J sandwiches. For me it was the meds in the car. Everyone asking me to smile when taking a picture ….I’m trying is all I could say!
Needless to say when the time came to pack up and go home I was ready. I had everyone lined up that I needed for when I returned on the flight home physio, chiro, even my RMT was scheduled for the week of my return. I was checked into the right seats and flight…only to miss it due to the large backlog at the security gate!! I had every emotion known to man happen cross through me and then some. But we needed to find a flight home….so at this point you take what you can get and what you get is to fly home with the carrier that for me is the most uncomfortable flight known to man. Smaller seats and they don’t adjust!!!! In my mind I just wanted to get home so just suck it up and do it.
When I got home and off the plane as I was delayed a few days my appointments were not lined up except for RMT and at that point he just tread slowly but even he admitted that his massage may not give me the relief I needed. It didn’t… but we tried. My pain level was skyrocketing by the minute and the numbness and tingling in my hand and arms wouldn’t stop. I finally asked to go to an urgent care clinic or hospital as I needed an x-ray to figure out what is going on. We did that only to be told that my x-rays are normal but what has happened is that I have a severely pissed off nerve root! The numbness and tingling will need time and let’s up your meds a bit to make it not as bad, as well as going to physio will help, and perhaps some rest?? I really believe that the tape saved me from something worse happening that day…..honestly I really would love to lose the storm clouds that keep on following me around. It’s like pigpen in Charile Brown never losing his cloud of dirt.
My Everest... 
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