Saturdays and Sundays are very quiet here at the NIH Clinical Center. VERY quiet. I was going to say "dead quiet" but that might be in bad taste considering where I am. They try to get patients in on Sundays and out on Thursdays, so by the time the weekend rolls around, there are very few patients, only enough Nurses to tend to the patients that are left, and rotating on-call Doctors. Remember, this is first and foremost a research facility and secondarily a hospital. My Gaggle is off on the weekends. Memo to med students: go thee into research!
I decided to focus on back surgery rehab this weekend. Oh yeah, remember that little incident? It was the surgery I had at the beginning of October? The one to fix the herniated disk I didn't know I had? The disk that was impinging the nerve doing damaging it and leaving my left hip in excruciating pain, my leg weak, and my foot flopping, tingly, and no longer under my control? I haven't really had the chance or the energy to focus on that and today was as good a day as any to start.
Needless to say I woke up this morning feeling relatively good. And it was a beautiful fall day here in Bethesda that just begged me to get outside. So after the usual morning rituals of vitals, medications and blood draws, I hit the road. OK, more accurately, I walked slowly and deliberately using as close to a normal gait as I have had in a long time. However you label it, I walked outside around the campus for 45 minutes working up quite a sweat in the process. After lunch and a sufficient rest period, I hit the road again. I stayed inside this time though. I did laps around the atrium slowly. This is hard stuff!
The good news is that it feels like the nerve controlling my left leg is slowly coming back. It's going to take alot more work on my part, but I feel like if I put the effort in, I'll get some good results. So if you see a very slow, tiara wearing, Fabulous Pink Cane using walker in your neighborhood, just know you are in the presence of a recovering Princess!
On the Cushings front, my potassium and sodium levels are back in the normal range. Sadly I'm still on very restricted fluid intake (thus hydratin' NOT!), but hopefully I'll be released from that when my Gaggle returns on Monday. Funny how much better I feel when they get things like potassium and sodium levels where they are supposed to be. Who knew those things were so important?
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