Hard day, long day, good day

Monday yielded an excellent visit with pain management. The doc and I were on the same page from the beginning. He confirmed and reinforced my belief that physical activity and movement are vital to getting better, that fighting through pain is essential, and that the siren song of morpheus is an express train to hell.

The plan we came up with is to target some epidural steroid injections to the symptomatic area as opposed to the area that looks bad on imaging. Nerve/pain mapping shows that the L-5 area needs attention first, followed by L-3.

Long term studies have shown that this approach can be quite efficacious, with 80 percent of people achieving a 50 percent or more reduction in pain over 2-5 years. There are reasons to believe this will work for me, but there are also reasons it might not. The best course forward seems to be targeted injections. If that doesn't work -- and due to hypertrophic foramenal narrowing -- it might not -- then we'll look at surgery. But first things first.

So yesterday I had a 6 a.m. show time for the first injection. And 6 a.m. really meant 5:30 a.m. because of going-through-the-motions phantom menace screening. Which meant wheels in the well NLT 0430. Which meant up and at 'em at 0300 because my B/N had to do all that girl stuff.

So by the time the injection was done it had already been a long day. But it was just beginning.

When we returned we let the kids out of their cell and spent several hours checking cows and exploring. It was a breezy day and a touch on the cool side but there was endless nature stuff on display. It was a lovely and relaxing time. I was a bit wobbly on my pins, but that was expected. I pushed through it.

It's a Horned Lark (Eremophila alpestris) baby. See it?

Now?

Cool stuff.

I didn't take enough pics and videos of our simple excursion. Too busy living the moment I guess.

In the evening we shot off a few firecrackers.

:-)

Smoke out!

Be well and embrace the blessings of liberty.