Well, life has been a swirl of paper and pain over here in the Miser Mom neck of the woods. My husband and I have been divvying this up: the paper has sort of piled up around me, and the pain has piled up around him. Fortunately, both paper and pain seem to be subsiding.
The pain started attaching itself to my husband right after the New Year. It started with discomfort whenever he sat. For an ADHD guy, sitting has always been one of his least favorite activities, but the pain got so acute so that he couldn't sit at the dinner table, or sit in church, or sit in a car . . . yoicks. He got some X-rays. The preliminary diagnosis: degenerative spinal arthritis leading to crumbling lumbar something-or-others, leading to pinched nerves.
The pain turned into numbness. MRI's of his spine followed, suggesting that maybe spinal arthritis was not really the culprit, after all. If it wasn't the butler that did it, who? Like a bad TV show, we had to wait for the next week's episode of MRI to scan his pelvis. As long as the docs were filming, they decided to go for some shock value, and so they sent him in for electrical nerve testing. (Along the way I got to discover just how frightened my husband is of electric shocks . . . it was nerve testing in more than one sense!)
Fortunately, eventually, both the second MRI and the Franken-tests confirmed that the problem was a cyst on his hamstring. A big (1.5") cyst, but basically just a blister. Another week of waiting, a sonogram to determine precise location, and a needle to drain the cyst, and he returned back to nearly normal.
Which, for my husband, is not exactly normal in the sense that one might mean for other people. He's thrown himself back onto his bike, is taking Russian language classes for fun, and is trying to get a waiver to stay in the army a few more years. (And why, you ask, would the army want to toss out a perfectly good 62-year-old man who is possibly suffering from degenerative spinal arthritis?)
The fix for the cyst was simple. The diagnosis was the bear in the cave; we'll be sorting out the bills and reimbursements for his many tests for a few months yet. But at least we know now he's not decrepit; he's just lumpy.
I, too, have been getting lumpier over time. Every once in a while, I notice a hard lump (on my thigh, on my arm), and I point it out to my doctor with understandable alarm. So far, my doctor just shrugs it off with "it's a fatty nodule". Okay. I've got fatty nodules. And the older I get, the lumpier I'll get, too. I'd looked forward to growing older with my guy, but it looks like our marriage goes beyond even that: now I know my husband and I can grow lumpy together.
The pain started attaching itself to my husband right after the New Year. It started with discomfort whenever he sat. For an ADHD guy, sitting has always been one of his least favorite activities, but the pain got so acute so that he couldn't sit at the dinner table, or sit in church, or sit in a car . . . yoicks. He got some X-rays. The preliminary diagnosis: degenerative spinal arthritis leading to crumbling lumbar something-or-others, leading to pinched nerves.
The pain turned into numbness. MRI's of his spine followed, suggesting that maybe spinal arthritis was not really the culprit, after all. If it wasn't the butler that did it, who? Like a bad TV show, we had to wait for the next week's episode of MRI to scan his pelvis. As long as the docs were filming, they decided to go for some shock value, and so they sent him in for electrical nerve testing. (Along the way I got to discover just how frightened my husband is of electric shocks . . . it was nerve testing in more than one sense!)
Fortunately, eventually, both the second MRI and the Franken-tests confirmed that the problem was a cyst on his hamstring. A big (1.5") cyst, but basically just a blister. Another week of waiting, a sonogram to determine precise location, and a needle to drain the cyst, and he returned back to nearly normal.
Which, for my husband, is not exactly normal in the sense that one might mean for other people. He's thrown himself back onto his bike, is taking Russian language classes for fun, and is trying to get a waiver to stay in the army a few more years. (And why, you ask, would the army want to toss out a perfectly good 62-year-old man who is possibly suffering from degenerative spinal arthritis?)
The fix for the cyst was simple. The diagnosis was the bear in the cave; we'll be sorting out the bills and reimbursements for his many tests for a few months yet. But at least we know now he's not decrepit; he's just lumpy.
I, too, have been getting lumpier over time. Every once in a while, I notice a hard lump (on my thigh, on my arm), and I point it out to my doctor with understandable alarm. So far, my doctor just shrugs it off with "it's a fatty nodule". Okay. I've got fatty nodules. And the older I get, the lumpier I'll get, too. I'd looked forward to growing older with my guy, but it looks like our marriage goes beyond even that: now I know my husband and I can grow lumpy together.
I love your story telling. Also love this happy ending for something so hard to find.
ReplyDeleteThere are also fatty nodules in my household, so I get to participate in the lumpiness, too!