And my 2016 wasn't that great either. We're up in the mountains for Christmas, as usual, only this time I'm not skiing. It was this time last year that I took to my bed for three days with the world's worst sinus infection and got up with sciatica! If you haven't had sciatica, you're lucky. It almost makes childbirth palatable. Mine was a shooting pain from my lower back, round the buttock and straight down the back of my right leg. Walking, sitting, standing, lying - all painful. The speed at which this thing progressed was pretty astonishing, and despite various meds prescribed by a Pain Management specialist, (which either made me throw up or unable to function), nothing really alleviated the pain. We even tried an epidural steroid injection which was almost as painful as the sciatica itself, and did bugger all. I
The sciatica was caused by a herniated disc, which is when the gunk that's supposed to be inside your disc, oozes out. In my case it had oozed out and was sitting on my sciatic nerve so I had surgery in April to clean it all up. Post surgery, I was horrified to realize that the pain, although lessened, never really went away. "Give it time", said my doctor. "The nerve is aggravated by the surgery and it needs time to settle down.". I was never really "better" and had to postpone my annual trip to the UK till the end of the summer so that sitting for 8 hours could even be contemplated.
After the summer I went whining back to my doctor, who suggested an MRI. Another nightmare for me but I managed to remain calm and not make a fool of myself by hyper-ventilating and panicking. When they tell you it's an "Open MRI" its not much better than the tube thing if you're claustrophobic. You're basically lying under a huge sheet of metal that is so close to your face you have to turn to the side. Anyway, to my utter dismay, the MRI showed that the very same disc had herniated on the other side . Are you kidding me? To say I was disappointed it putting it very mildly.
Fortunately, it hasn't progressed quite as quickly as the right side, but we're getting pretty close. I am back to having to sit down to put socks and shoes on, not because I can't touch my toes, but because my back can't take the strain of standing on one foot and bending over at the same time. How's that for making you feel like an octogenarian? As can be seen from the paucity of blog posts recently, my writing has suffered as I can't sit for more than thirty minutes at a time, and I haven't looked into anything like voice recognition typing. (Actually I lie, I managed to send an e-mail from my I-phone by dictation, although my British accent led to a few weird typos.)
So yeah, 2016 was