Shinn the Writer

A Testimonial

 

My medical appointments are pretty well taken care of by now. I’ve got a makeup cardiologist visit and a delayed gastroenterologist visit (neither of these postponements were of my doing) looming on the horizon, but things are pretty well handled.

 

But as Roseanne Roseannadanna always used to say, “It’s all the time something!” You may remember that in my final push to reach a “healthy weight” (at least according to the CDC) I upped my daily water intake and the length of my daily walk. I’ve maintained this extra glass and extra mile pretty much to this day, though time sometimes precludes the third mile of my walk. I truly enjoy the walk, though, especially on days like yesterday when the weather was ideal. And there was another reason I enjoyed yesterday’s walk which leads me to this article.

 

An old nemesis has returned. It’s not as bad as before, but impinged on my ability to do my walks the way I like to do them. It’s stenosis, a fairly close relative of sciatica. For a time, it made walking very uncomfortable, to the point that I couldn’t do it. I went through several months of physical therapy which got rid of it for me, but about a month ago it made a return. Or perhaps it was sciatica. I’m not really sure. 

 

Either way, it comes and goes. It’s unpredictable in terms of both duration and intensity, but it seems to come on during my walks, making me think that walking triggers it. A couple of times it came on when I had close to a half-mile from my house and I simply had to wait it out until the pain subsided to continue. Other times I shortened my walk so as not to aggravate the sensation and to ensure I was never so far from home that I might not make it back.

 

Recently I saw an ad on TV for a cream that was to provide relief. Of course, the ad caught me by surprise and by the time I got to pen and paper, I’d forgotten the name of the product. Although I never saw that ad again, in an off-hand discussion I was having with a care-giver acquaintance who recommended that I try lidocaine.

 

The name “lidocaine” sounded familiar. I had once been called upon to pick some up for my sister-in-law. After making the purchase, I found that it was actually a prescription strength version that she needed. Though I had no reason to keep the original purchase, I did so anyway. The plastic bottle took up little space and, well, you just never know. Yeah, a terrible approach to housekeeping. To compound this “mistake”, when I had my bathroom remodeled, I threw out lots of unused stuff, but somehow kept the lidocaine. And prior to my next walk, I thought of it and easily found it.