Get caught up...

First and foremost, forgive any misspellings or gramatical errors in this and furher blog posts. The massive amount of medications I am on make it very difficult to concentrate enough to spell properly or keep from rambeling and repeating myself - and it is only fair, if you care enough to read these posts, that I be honest with you enough to share with you the effects that this is having one me. I have had a college level reading and writing ability since elementary school and love to write as a hobby - but this is getting increasingly more and more difficult due to the mental affects I am suffering due to the medications.

Luckily doing things such as starting this blog is made easier because most of what I do "on the computer" now is actually done via my iPhone and from lying in bed. Sitting upright for long enough to check email and make blog entries on a dialy basis would cause me the same amount of pain as if I were doing coomputer related stuff at work. If I could sit at a laptop for this long, I could and certainly would have returned to work....

Back Issues: The first weekend of December in 2006 I suffered an herniated disc in my back. To make a long story short, the herniation only exagerated the existing problem I had with a narrowing of the pathways that the nerves are in within my sipne (called stenosis) and I ended up undergoing several injections in my spine before finally undergoing surgery to inplant a spinal cord stimulator in my back. This makes me feel as if I am sitting on a bibrating pilow but coveres my entire bosy from my waist to my toes. Depending on the severity of the pain, it does a good job at limiting the sevirity of the pain I am feeling or masking it entirely. Unfortunately it doesn't seem to be as effective now as when it was first implanted. More on that later.

After getting the implant I returned to work and did great for a few months before the accumulating effect of me sitting upright all day began to cause an increassingly amount of pain once again. I returned to the pain clinic and began, without realizing it at a time, a routine of getting treatments for my back avery 4-5 weekss for the next year. The issue with my back has reached the point where I cannot stand for more than 5-10 minutes (and that is really pushing it..), sit up for more than 60-90 minutes, or even recline back on pillows or a recliner for more than 2-3 hours before my lower back begins to really hurt nad the sciatic pain begins to intensify.

The sciatic pain is the worst. At times it feels like I have been sliced to the bone from the hip to the knww. Other times (quite often, as a matter of fact) the nerves in one leg or another are so sensative that I can't beat to have a sheet much less clothing of any kind to touch my thighs. The most severe pain, however, comes any time I have been upright for more than an hour or so and it feels as if a midget has snuck up behind me and stabs me to the bone with a sharp knitting needle. When that happens I cannot help but to jerk and yell out - something that often wakes me and my wife up at night.

During the course of all this the pain level kept increasing to the point that it was becoming more and more difficult for em to work a 40-hour week. Finally, the first of May of 2009, I once again was placed on disability by my doctors and eventally was terminated from my job at SKC.

As a side note about that - I bear no ill will towards SKC for making that decision and have continued a very codial relationship with the folks I worked with there. They are a great group of people that I wish nothing but the best for.

Knee Issues: If the problems with my back weren't enough, being up and around following my return to work really aggrivated an existing problem I was having with my knees (especially the left one) and my mobility issues have progressed through these steps over the past 18 months:

1. Using a cane whenever I had to do much walking such as at work or church
2. Using a cane even to get in and out of a house, and avoiding stairs if at all possible
3. Using a cane every time I am upright - even small trips like from my bed to the bathroom
4. Using a rolling walker (called a "rollater") to visit my doctors and such
5. Having to be pushed in a wheelchair any time I will have to travel more then the shortest distances

I still use the cane whenever I am somewhere that is not wheelchair or rollater accessable (like some portions of my house) but I don't even get out to my in-laws house (and they live less than 150 yards away) or visit my parents due to the fact that both trips would require me having to go up stairs. For the past several months I haven't even been able to attent family gatherings such as birthday celebrations and such - something that hurts me deeply and that I can only hope thay can understand and forgive me for.