{"id":669,"date":"2015-10-26T10:09:06","date_gmt":"2015-10-25T21:09:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/?p=669"},"modified":"2016-03-19T16:17:57","modified_gmt":"2016-03-19T03:17:57","slug":"my-spine-is-the-bassline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/?p=669","title":{"rendered":"My Spine Is The Bassline?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Seriously, how often do you get the chance to use a Shriekback song title as a medical reference?<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong>By Way Of A Preamble<\/strong><br \/>\nBy the time I got back to House Needs-A-Name from the airport, I couldn&#8217;t stand or walk properly; Back pain had turned into not being able to put weight on my right leg.<\/p>\n<p>A day or so later, things were improving, but not as swiftly as I&#8217;d like, so I went to a physiotherapist, and we worked on it.<br \/>\nAll good.<\/p>\n<p><strong>It&#8217;s What Happens Next<\/strong><br \/>\nThen my calf muscle started cramping up, I assumed\u00a0because of the limping.<\/p>\n<p>I mentioned this to the physio, who explained the difference between a cramp &amp; actual pain, and seemed &#8230; concerned &#8230; by this development.<br \/>\nThen I mentioned that the sole of my foot had gone numb.<br \/>\nI never want to see <strong>that<\/strong> expression on the face of a medical professional again.<\/p>\n<p>Diagnosis, after determining that I couldn&#8217;t do a calf raise on my right leg, was a disc bulge, and I was sent off for some x-rays\u00a0<em>right bloody now<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Sometime around then I also found walking difficult, or at least walking without a limp, which is what the physio told me to do.<br \/>\nThis may have paid off when I had to visit WINZ a day or so later, to assure them that I was still job-seeking; At that stage my non-limping movement was down to steps about the length of my own foot, and very deliberate turns, and my case worker looked horrified. I didn&#8217;t know it at the time, but I was apparently placed on the &#8220;Leave this guy alone&#8221; list, based on not really being fit for work that wasn&#8217;t an acting role as &#8216;Zombie #17 &#8211; Slow-moving Longhair&#8217;.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Skipping To The Last Chapter<\/strong><br \/>\nA couple of months of physiotherapy, an X-ray, a visit to a spinal surgeon, an MRI, and a whole lot of wondering what was going on in my back later, here&#8217;s where its at;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>There seems to be improvement &#8211; I can walk a whole lot better &amp; further, and can do a wobbly calf raise on my right leg.<br \/>\n<em>There has been a slow improvement on the calf-raise front. When the problem first became apparent, it was like the muscles weren&#8217;t there; No response whatsoever. Couldn&#8217;t even support myself on it.<br \/>\nBy the time I saw the spinal surgeon, I could get maybe a\u00a0centimeter\u00a0of lift in the\u00a0heel.<br \/>\n<\/em><em>Now I can transition into standing on the ball of that foot, but can&#8217;t hold it for long.<\/em><\/li>\n<li>I have another meeting with the spinal surgeon in a few weeks time, to go over the MRI results &#8211; I&#8217;m expecting, or at least hoping, that they&#8217;ll say that it seems to be coming right.<br \/>\n<em>At the first appointment with said surgeon, they said that they&#8217;d not be considering any form of intervention at this stage anyway, because these things can heal themselves over a period of months, and it wasn&#8217;t causing me significant pain\/distress\/impact. I&#8217;m OK with that.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Seriously, how often do you get the chance to use a Shriekback song title as a medical reference? By Way Of A Preamble By the time I got back to House Needs-A-Name from the airport, I couldn&#8217;t stand or walk properly; Back pain had turned into not being able to put weight on my right [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-669","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-holiday-2015"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3O6N9-aN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=669"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":671,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/669\/revisions\/671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hoarde.net\/craigblog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}