The Boring One About My Leg

For those who don’t know anything about my problems with my leg (and back), it’s been causing me a great deal of pain in the last year. When the pain began in April or May of 2007, it wasn’t bad at first. Nothing really happened to make it start hurting, I just noticed that it did one day. It wouldn’t bother me all the time, just every once in awhile. I thought “if it’s still bothering me like this in June, I’ll go to the doctor.”

It was still bothering me at the end of June, I went to the walk-in clinic, and they gave me some muscle relaxers and told me to keep taking Aleve. That helped for a couple weeks, but didn’t stop the pain. I figured the next stage there was getting a referral, and I wasn’t sure it was that serious. I went to a chiropractor, and he seemed like a quack. He had signed pictures of him with Whitesnake and Frank Stallone. Didn’t seem like the right atmosphere to me.

After that, Megan and I took our Europe trip. I made it through without too much trouble and had a great time. I did have to miss one evening in Nimes, but overall I don’t remember it causing me that much trouble on the trip. Three days after we got back, my former employer laid off pretty much everyone without equity in the company. It was totally unexpected. I suddenly had to think of my leg being ruled a pre-existing condition at any job I’d ever have in the future, in addition to the stress of traveling the country to find a new job with my wedding and my ten year high school reunion in the weeks to come.

I found a great job with relative quickness, but the insurance was scheduled to start 30 days after the first day of my first full month of employment. November. As it turned out, there was some administrative difficulty getting my plan in order, since I was working in North Carolina and living in Virginia. By the time I had proof of insurance (not presenting as self-pay), it was mid-November from then, the first referral appointment was late November.

At that time, I went to the doctor and got a referral to a physical therapist. I did feel some improvement after some of the sessions, but not all of them. I went to four sessions before heading to Des Moines to spend the Christmas holiday with my parents. Because of weather and the precarious nature of travel, Megan and I ended up driving a couple hours to Raleigh to make a flight to make up for the one that got cancelled from Richmond. That just kicked off a comedy of errors for Northwest, who I honestly intend never to fly with again. (I hear people say that for effect, when an agent tries to get them to gate check their bag, but I mean it.) A few days later, one evening I was laying on my back, on the floor, in the worst physical pain that I’ve ever experienced. For those of you who do not know what nerve pain is live, I hope that you never experience it. I went to a doctor in Des Moines the next morning and was prescribed a steroid series, which helped until I got back to Richmond.

I didn’t book any more visits with the physical therapist. Our plans called for a move to Charlotte early in 2008, and I suspected that I would find some treatment there. I am seeing a chiropractor in Charlotte and that has relieved the pain considerably, but it’s still a long journey to being pain-free. I’m told there are no guarantees. It bothered me a little more than normal this week, but I’m hoping to be able to help out around the house tomorrow. Sometimes I can’t, even when I would like to. Lame. Literally!