Evening

Going to Dr. J really did seem to help.  Walking over there, the pain was a sharper, pinching pain mainly in the right leg at the hip.  Every step rang out to my brain that it did not want to be taken.


He did not seem to be able to make a regular adjustment, but just going through the motions and having me rest on the roller table seemed to do the trick.


As I walked home, I could still feel pain in the upper right leg, but it was a different kind of pain.  It was more of the sort you feel after working out at the gym - in the muscles.


I had taken 2 liquid ibuprofen and an epsom salt bath before going.  And the throbbing came back after I got home.  I went downstairs and began to do my ball exercises, really pushing the stretch part on the upper right leg.


Tonight the throbbing has stopped, and the pain med has definitely passed its half life.


This back trouble is so much like a roller coaster that mainly goes up but has a few small hills down now and then.


Sometimes I find myself asking why I have this problem...  I can go back to my family history and name my mother's mom, who had disc surgery at around fifty.  I was told she had one of the very first successful disc surgeries of its kind, and yes, it was in Texas, although she lived in Birmingham, Michigan!  She bounced back by taking dancing lessons from Arthur Murray and becoming Michigan's top ballroom dancer that year, competing against ladies in their twenties!  She later became an ice dancer.  (Not like the ones of today that wear practically nothing and perform some rather lewd movements)


I don't have the funding to do this, so going to the gym has to be my outlet.  Tomorrow.


Then I think how I skied every winter since age twelve.  Of course, the ski-bum part of my life was really only about four years, where I skied every day every winter.  But any sport can cause back misalignment when done regularly, and I never even heard of a chiropractor back then.  So all that hot-dogging with the various jumps and hard falls probably took its toll on my back.


The above is not to mention that after marrying a rather large guy, the Lord saw fit to give us rather large children.  Daniel will say it's all his fault.  He was the last and the one we called our, "Petite Bebe."  The midwife's scale only went to twelve pounds and he filled it completely wearing only a diaper.  But no, it was not his being so big that caused this chronic sciatica.


His brother and sister did their part in stretching the apparatus to prepare the way for his extra large frame.  Maybe it was carrying these babies after they were born, like when they weighed twenty pounds at two months that might have contributed.  But this was only part of the problem.


It was the moving every 2 - 4 years from Methodist church to Methodist church in North Carolina for fifteen years, hauling all the preacher's accumulation of papers and books, which only grew in size each time that probably really accounts for the battle of the bulges.  


Yes, it grew in size even after we left the ministry and settled in Texas and especially after I  took off to help our grandkids for a few months.  Amazing how much stuff can accumulate in a few short months of not throwing anything away!

This is the first dumpster our church provided for us after I told a lady in  Sunday school of our predicament.
You can see how big it was next to the size of my little Daewoo.  It took six guys only two hours to fill it one Saturday .

 This dumpster was filled with only outside clutter.  I threw very few things in this one.  But the church got us another smaller dumpster for the inside clutter.  I had to go through everything and be sure not to trigger my hoarder into a huge depression by throwing away things he might surely miss.  It is said throwing away the hoarders buried treasures is like taking away the alcohol from the alcoholic.  One must tread softly.

 This is our room.  It is still a mess today.  But I can't do much about it now.  Maybe that is why the Lord has allowed this back thing to go on and on.  I know He is in control, even despite all this squalor.  Good thing we are empty nesters!

 This was the family room after a pathway was made.  Progress!  It is kept pretty clean now.

 This used to be Daniel's room.  It ended up being a storage room or the place where things just got thrown.  I cleaned out two large roach nests out of this room.  This stuff was only part of the second dumpster.

 Daniel's room used to be the garage to the house.  It got like this after he moved into Jame's old room, which is now just like this room.   You can see the door to the outside.  There is a little storage area there, between the room and the outside door, which lifts up as any old fashioned garage door.  We have an upright freezer in there along with a whole lot more stuff.  It used to be cleaned out back when we had the dumpster.  This is why we need a person who is an OCD hoarding specialist to come alongside him to help him get the ball rolling.  Pick, sort, decide, and act.  Pick up the stuff, sort it according to what it is, decide if it is necessary, and covenant with yourself to act on that decision.  It can go into keep, throw away, give away or pending (which can only have a limited amount of boxes and can only pend for a short time limit.)

 Here is the, "Girls Room" which was what kept me going.  This is what it looks like now.  I kept thinking our darling granddaughters would be coming to visit and would be needing to sleep peacefully while traveling.

It gave me great joy to turn the, "Junk room" into the girl's room!  Having a mental picture of them playing and resting in the room made it worth all the hauling and pitching.  One must have a vision to have any hope.


So, perhaps this was the last straw for my lil ol' back.  For now.  I would so much like to make James (and then Daniel's) room into a nice guest room/study and our room back, even though the dogs next door bark incessantly in the mornings.  Our doggies are a bit of competition for them now.


Tomorrow I will show you what our pets look like.  Actually, that may wait for a bit, since Mark gave me a new camera for my birthday, and I would like to have him put the software on here, so the pictures can be less fuzzy.  I am planning on giving the old camera to the younger granddaughter, Lovie Girl.  While cleaning, I found a little camera just like it which we already gave to our big Honey Girl.  Then Lovie will have one just like it.  They can have some fun shooting each other!  


This is really fun, this blogging.  I am so glad i decided to try it!

A new week begins

Did pretty well over the weekend.  Even got through some raking and general picking up.
The pain set in Sunday afternoon and worsened as the sun began to set.
Couldna get to sleep and woke every time I turned over.

And here I thought I was weaning off of coffee!  Ha.

Will be walking to the chiropractor in a little over an hour.  See how that does.

As for food, maybe it was the shrimp, but something I ate yesterday definitely didn't agree with my stomach.  Hopefully it was not the GF cake I made for my birthday to share with Hubby.  It turned out pretty well, actually; much better than I thought it would.
It called for carrots and walnuts.  I left out the walnuts and used a can of pumpkin instead of the carrots.
Instead of white flour I substituted one cup of flaxseed cereal, and the other cup was 1/3 c. buckwheat and 2/3 c. masa.  Pretty much followed the recipe other than those.  I think the carrots and walnuts would have been better, but I got too tired to grind the walnuts, and all we had were the tiny carrots.  The cream cheese frosting was really good.

Since it didn't bother me after my birthday serving, I am thinking it may have been the shrimp that stirred up my bowels...

Should prolly keep a food journal... This may get confusing.  But I know there are various reasons one can have painful inflammation.

Why

I ask myself why blog.  Someone who cares about me said I should.  I like writing.  I am seeking to halan.  That means overcome.  There are many things to halan.  I have two lower bad discs and one upper bad disc in my spine.  This has been going on a pretty long time.
I have tried writing a journal of what helps and when.  It gets boring.  So maybe this will be the ticket.

This journey of back trouble has impacted my faith and personal relationships in a not so good way.  Writing about it may help resolve some of these difficulties.  It may help me get to know my own heart.  It may help bring back that, "First Love" Christ told us we need in the book of Revelation.

Halan is Greek and it means not only overcome but connotes fight.  We are in a battle. A fierce battle. We have an adversary.  He is not so fond of us.  Some people just say, "Oh, him.  Well, my policy is not to even give him lip service."  They turn away from the fight.

But Christ Yeshua has told us to enter the fight.  It is one of his commands!  So fight I will.  Fight I am.  I am willing to fight.  I am wanting to fight.  I am waiting to fight.  Ha.  That was a quote out of, "My Fair Lady!"
It was said by Eliza's daddy.  I'll never forget that.  He was my favorite character in the play.  Ah, nice digression, but getting back to my desire to halan.  It is a fierce battle which requires strength.  It starts in the heart.  It is given by the Holy Spirit.  It is also fought by him.  Stand still and see the salvation of the Lord.  You know the word, "Salvation" in the original language William Tyndale translation means, Health?"  Awesome.

Enough philosophizing.  I will sometimes do this.  I will also sometimes only say, "I rode my bike to the gym, walked around without pain, stretched with less or more pain, swam peacefully, and rode home."

The disc that is bulging in my lower back is pressing on the nerve that goes to my leg.  This causes pain when I sit.  Sometimes it causes pain when I walk.  It always causes my toes to be numb.  Some people say surgery is what I need.  Many people who have had surgery end up having to have surgery again.  My doc says what I am doing at the gym and at home is what is between me and surgery.  I don't go many places.  I don't go to church, out to dinner, to concerts, to places that require sitting for very long.  I do a lot of bouncing on the exercise ball, a lot of stretching and the bike-gym-swim routine.  Most days it hurts pretty much of the time.  There are some days when I can walk a short distance and do a few non-bending chores and not have to ice my back.

People judge me a lot cuz I don't go anywhere or have much of a, "Life."  When we visited family and other  family came at Christmas, it took me almost til Easter to get back to where I was before I went.  But God is teaching me a lot through all this.  He is showing me there is healing in his word.  "He sent his word and healed them."  Yeshua is his word, and the Holy Bible is his word.  So I stream his word and have it on a whole lot of the time.  It also helps me to fall asleep and go back to sleep every time I wake up, which is every time I turn over.  Sleep is not something that is very restful these days.  But we'll get to that later.