Neck Blog Three: It's On

     As you'll recall, last time we checked in, our plucky hero had just undergone a cervical nerve block. My feeling at the time was that it was going well. This did not change. I guess we're at four weeks now and I can report that following the events described in the previous entry, my range of motion continued to improve, all of the soft tissue/muscular pain across my throat and upper chest disappeared, the crawling, itching, writhing sensation across my shoulders went away, the muscles in my right arm stopped screaming and jumping, the knots all across the back of my neck and into my shoulder relaxed, I stopped fumbling things, I stopped tripping over things, I could look to the right without my hand going numb, and my shoulder, which has been locking up horribly and painfully and frequently for many years, hasn't locked up once since the shot. Most of my frame went through a rapid and fairly agonizing readjustment period as muscles long-held in shortened positions or overstretched for years to compensate for my body's slow crumpling to the right were dragged into new, better orientations, but that's just fine: for a precious couple of weeks I could really walk again, by which I mean stride without my head pulling itself forward to look at the ground, my legs becoming heavy, my feet shuffling and tripping. It made photography ever so much easier, especially what with being able to use my right arm properly again. And I could lift objects without bracing my elbow into my side, hand things to people at arm's length, scratch the back of my head, all that good stuff, not to mention pain levels shot down something like 75%.

     Now, all is not paradisiacal: first of all, I've always been aware of the site of the compromised nerve because it's not been freed, it's just been drugged into insensibility and made to stop keening, and second of all the shot is wearing off. It's kind of like in Flowers for Algernon, when he can feel it all going away again... except I can get it back. Even as the muscles in my arm begin their refusals and plaints, even as I drop objects and stumble over nothing, even as the back of my neck crawls and seizes again, I take heart: all of this is further proof that this one trapped nerve is the source of the trouble. The neurosurgeon now gives it a 90+ percent chance that the operation will be a success, with the definition of success being that it stops getting worse and I achieve the same benefits, relatively, as from the shot but without the constant awareness that it's only covering up the real problem in the first place and the symptoms will return. Furthermore, obviously the procedure described in my previous post is not something I want to repeat every month or three and anyway, after a few, they start to cause damage and often stop working. No thank you! So we're doing it.

despite its proximity to my spinal cord this is a pretty damn safe operation, and the dice have landed me at the modernest of cutting edge clinics to have it in. But I digress. So, there comes the phone call, sometime soon. Then we'll schedule the procedure. I'm delighted to announce that my first covid-19 vaccination will take place in about two weeks; it's unlikely the surgery will be scheduled for that soon. Most likely, it's around four or five weeks in my future.

     I'll take a bus and a train out, I'll check in, they'll settle me into my room, they'll come for me, they'll knock me out, blah blah blah, and then the surgeon will open the front of my throat, move all of the internal structures to one side and hold them there, remove the damaged disk, and replace it with a custom-printed titanium cage, fusing the two vertebrae and allowing bone to grow throughout the cage until eventually, some years later, both vertebrae and the disk space will comprise one, as the surgeon put it, "very expensive block". Far from experiencing reduced movement, it's very likely I'll actually have more. One needs to have upwards of four vertebrae fused before noticing any real differences, and the new stability of the joint (now no longer a joint) will take pressure off the surrounding ones. Although absolutely terrifying, it all sounds really good to me!

     I'll surely get another blog post or two in before I go, and I'm working on getting as many photos as possible uploaded to my photo site (link to the right) in the meantime. It's intended as a gallery, so please browse it to your enjoyment, but bear in mind that if you do order a print or a download (which you could have printed on a mug or a key fob or a mouse mat or canvas bag or T-shirt or whatever!), you'll be helping me save up for things I'll need during my recovery period like ice packs, and for the hospital trip like an overnight bag; if you feel like supporting me in a different way regarding that, my Amazon wish list is also linked to the right. Everything I read tells me that I could be blogging away again, taking photos willy-nilly, and going for nice swinging walks within a few weeks but knowing me it'll feel for the first while like a medium-sized whale fell on me, then I'll feel remarkably better very quickly, immediately do something far too strenuous or protracted, and do the crushed out thing again for a bit, oscillating my way toward health. I do know that it'll probably be a year before I should consider myself strong enough again to attempt something like serious yard work. I also know I won't be doing a blog post in the first few days: they'll be slicing all the way through my throat and neck and I've been told to expect one heck of a "strange feeling" sore throat, along with potential transitory hoarseness, so I won't want to be yammering on at my voice recognition program for a little while.

coincidentally also Deadpool, and way back when I suspected it would get this far I treated myself to a couple of books for the first week or so. Lately, given stress factors and pain levels and distractive elements and just all kinds of stuff, I can't really concentrate on reading enough to enjoy it unless it fits into a few particular niches. While I can always read a Sy Montgomery or an engaging reference book like Stephen Fry's Mythos or Derren Brown's Happy, I struggle with keeping my attention on pretty much anything else except for one genre: scientifically intensive hard science fiction. I can never get new books, so narrowing it down to two was agonizing, but I have them and they're waiting for me. I just don't know yet which one's going to the clinic on the day.

     Well, that sums it about up for now. To say I'm looking forward to it would be both wildly incorrect and 100% accurate. I'm looking forward to the eventual results, I'm looking forward to having this experience at such an amazing facility under the care of such consummate professionals, I'm looking forward to having a large chunk of my life back eventually, but the recovery period, especially the first part of it, is very daunting, and safe or not it's still awfully close to my spinal cord. I'm using that. There's nothing for it though, because it beats the alternatives: I could keep folding up, being in continually more pain, doing less and less, or I could keep getting stabbed in the neck with a huge needle over and over to less and less effect. It surprised me to learn that there are apparently significant numbers of people who opt for the latter option. That's just… ineffective thinking. It's an adventure, that's for sure, and I'll bring you along for the ride. Meanwhile be well, and have a good time.