I admit it. I've been keeping something from you all, my faithful readers. I said on Friday that it was a big day and that I would be filling you in this weekend. So here it goes...
One of the things I have mentioned that I was dealing with is a left foot flop that was leading me to use my Fabulous Pink Cane in order not to trip and fall. It was becoming more pronounced, as well as my entire left leg becoming much weaker than my right. Preliminary testing while I was in Bethesda led to the conclusion that the situation was not Cushing's related. Overall muscle atrophy is definitely a symptom of Cushing's, but the specific things that were going on in my left leg were not explained by that condition. Neurologists were called in, tests were performed. Low and behold, yet another medical malady was discovered.
I have been walking around with a herniated disc in my back that has done damage to the nerve controlling my left leg. You may insert "duh, you idiot" here. Be that as it may, it resulted in the excruciating pain in my left hip, radiating pain down the back of my leg, and eventually the inability to control my left foot. The neurologists all agreed I needed to get the disc fixed as soon as possible in order to give the damaged nerve the best chance of regenerating. But none of them would venture a guess on whether or not I would ever get full function back in the nerve. Yeah, no pressure...
The neurosurgeon who will be performing my pituitary surgery on October 25th agreed with the diagnosis on my back, and also agreed that I needed to get it fixed as soon as possible. He gave me the date of October 11th. If I could have surgery done on or before October 11th, I'd be fine for him to operate on the 25th. And so the race began.
My FABULOUS primary care physician, Dr. Anna Giocondo, came through for me yet again. She made a call to a neurosurgeon who met with me on Thursday (yes, I flew home from Bethesda on Wednesday in case you were unclear on the timeline...) and I was in surgery at 7am on Friday morning. After a night in St. Luke's hospital, I was home Saturday (yesterday) and here we are on Sunday. Talk about moving at the speed of light. But I cannot say enough about the motivating aspect of people in the know telling you that you need to take care of something or risk permanent damage that no amount of grit and determination will fix. It kind of lights a fire under any ass if you know what I mean.
The good news is that I already feel better. No real pain to speak of remains in my left hip, and I can already feel a slight improvement in the control of my left foot. Of course I do feel like I had surgery on my back. God bless oxycodone. But I'm getting around quite well and in my glass half full world, it can only get better from here. So chalk this one up as a victory. It wasn't necessarily fun getting to this point, but now that I'm here, it's all good!
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