To Hell and Back (?)

 

I guess that's what it looks like at 666 Hell Drive.  For me this past week, it was my second apartment home in Yonkers.  Oh, nothing is wrong with the place.   The problem is...welp...me.

It was just supposed to be my new traditional Thanksgiving trip east to see friends and have a few meals.  I had not been in my NY abode since May, given my recent left hip replacement and all.   But that, combined with the two knee replacements previously, had been in better shape for this trip than in the past.

Not that my body didn't try to warn me that this travel might be too much.

Two weeks before departure, I started to have infrequent but noticeable lower back twinges.   The occasional stabbing pain.   Luckily, I had an appointment with my fabulous physical therapist and he looked at the problem.  Given the hip surgery had created uneven leg lengths and subsequent shoe lifts, my PT said my body was still learning how to walk with its new gait.   And certain muscles needed to be re-educated with some exercises.  Armed with all that intel, I was still good to go to the Big Apple.

One five hour flight East and it was all over.   My back spasms were constant and I was Charles Laughton at Notre Dame.  How I got to Yonkers from JFK I will never know.

So, my first two days in NY were spent in my NY bed of pain as I alternated between ice packs and a heating pad that used to be my mother's forty years ago.  I envisioned an apartment fire from it, but the damn thing was working fine.   I called my internist in Los Angeles who prescribed for me a muscle relaxer, which helped but also did the usual side effect that kind of medication does.

Constipation.

The fun never stops.

I got through Thanksgiving Day okay, but all that fun activity seized up my back on Friday.   I was so desperate by the end of the day that I hit up Google.   Find me a chiropractor in Yonkers.   Not the perfect way to find medical assistance but any port in my storm would do.

Amazingly, I found a guy nearby who was open till 8PM.  The office staff worked hard to squeeze me in.   They were on the third floor of a building with no elevator which I thought was an odd spot to have an office with immobile patients.   Meanwhile, the doctor was spot on.  So good and thorough that I wanted him cloned and installed in a Westwood strip mall.  

Dr, Rodriguez confirmed everything my PT said with one added diagnosis he made after a "single finger" test.  My sacroiliac joint and surrounding muscles are super angry and really want nothing to do with my new gait.   The plane trip and subsequent dehydration messed me up royally.

The guy gave me some stimulus therapy, a massage, and a couple of joint "re-adjustments."   It helped for a while, but, by Sunday, I was hunched over again.

Now my internist has prescribed a week of steroids.   Meanwhile,  I look forward with dread next Wednesday.

My scheduled flight home.

Dinner last night:  Leftover chicken salad.