Still Checking In...
For the first time in a long time, I checked in on this blog and found that it still gets some views — someone out there is still looking at it once in a while. Thanks for your continued interest. And your continued perseverance! I know it’s been almost five months since I wrote anything!
I’m just about 10 months post-surgery now, so I will give you an update on my progress. I still have lots of numbness in my right leg and right hand, and that may improve more, but probably not. The docs I’ve asked agree that nerves can repair themselves for about a year and then, very little repair occurs. So what you have at the end of a year is pretty much what you’re going to have, and there’s no way it’s going to go away in the next two months.
I still have great difficulty writing with my right hand, or doing anything that requires fine-motor skills with that hand. That may continue to improve, though. The brain is remarkable at finding different ways to send out the commands to make things work. It’s called “re-organizing,” and goodness knows that my brain could use some re-organization. So it’s possible that I will get better at doing things with my right hand. I have no problems with anything else working, which is good!
I went back today and read some emails I’d sent the first couple weeks post-surgery, when I was still on pain-killers and steroids. Whoooo! For the most part they make sense, but many of them have places where I simply used the wrong — and completely unrelated — word. In some places there are three or four words just completely missing from a sentence. These weren’t just typos. Kinda funny now, I guess, but also a little scary; my brain needed more than re-organizing then, for sure.
A week from today, Laurie and I will be in Berlin, so obviously, I’m doing okay. I started exercising six weeks after the operation, as soon as the neurosurgeon said I could. I do far more with my left hand than I used to do, including some writing. As for the stuff with my right hand — it’s just an irritation and a nuisance sometimes. No big thing, at all. I’m just glad that everything else is fine. I can’t imagine how bad things would be if I hadn’t had the operation, so though this hasn’t been exactly fun, I’m glad to be where I am.