Catching Up

 I don't know if you've noticed but I've been away for a while. I have to say it hasn't been much fun. For a few months I'd been having increasingly severe levels of what I was told was sciatica due to a back injury I sustained many years ago and which has been an ongoing problem ever since. It flares up and after rest and/or an injection it subsides and I go back to normal. This time though it hadn't responded to a couple of injections and was getting steadily worse. While I waited for an MRI and my GP threw ever more painkillers at me I was getting more and more disabled. Walking was slow and painful and I was having to use a walking  stick all the time. Then I woke up on Saturday 9 December and couldn't even shuffle into my bathroom which is only a few steps away. I rang the bell - my husband and I have one each in case of emergencies and this was definitely one. Even before he arrived from his room - he snores like a train these days - I'd realised this warranted an ambulance ride to the Emergency Department. 

Ambulance services are somewhat stretched here at the moment and this was obviously not life threatening - excruciating maybe but even severe pain does not qualify - so it was close to two hours before it arrived. The paramedics - usually called ambos in Australia - were great. They quickly got me into a wheelchair and up our very steep driveway and onto a stretcher in the ambulance. It turns out that ambulance stretchers aren't all that comfortable for someone with severe back pain that all their strong painkillers weren't even touching. Sigh. 

All but one of the hospitals north of the Swan River (this pretty much cuts the city in half) had their EDs closed and ambulances ramped outside so I was taken to one some distance away in central Perth where I was triaged and taken in fairly quickly. The ambulance ramping problem has been on-going for some time and while you will get immediate treatment if it's life threatening you might otherwise have quite a wait in an ambulance so I was very grateful I got in so fast. 

A succession of doctors came to assess me over the next couple of hours and it was decided to admit me and book me in for the next available MRI which was on Monday. At last - I already had an appointment for one outside the hospital system but it was at the end of January so this was a great improvement. While I was in the ED I'd started to get numbness in my foot and by the time I got to the ward it had progressed up to my thigh. Along with all this my knee kept giving away whenever I put ant weight on it. As a result I spent the next ten days wheelchair bound  before advancing to the walking frame I'm still using. I do have exercises to do that I'm assured will eventually kick in - the time frame is ten to twelve weeks and I have to say they had better work. I have no desire to stay like this. 

I had my MRI on the Monday and it exposed several lower spine issues - one is the joint damaged so many years ago and as a result now seizing up in multiple ways, the other is a bulging disc in the next joint down. How I damaged this joint is a mystery - although I have a few suspicions. I'm a keen gardener and had dug over the veggie patch which might have had something to do with it. At this point I was transferred to a private hospital to be put under a physician who specialises in spinal injuries. She arranged for me to see a neurosurgeon who offered me the choice of a specialised injection or surgery. Unsurprisingly I chose the injection. For now it's wait and see - apparently it can take some weeks to work so wish me luck.