The Real Beginning

OK, I lied. This post goes back a little earlier than 2 years, in fact it goes back a little over 58 years.

If I had to guess I would say that being born had a lot to do with what is happening in my life today. "Of course!" you say, what an idiotic thing to mention. I only mention it because I'm pretty certain that genetics are responsible, at least in part, for the spinal stenosis predicament I'm currently in.

From an obscure gene on my mother's side, which seems to skip every other generation and affects mostly boys, I came down with Legg-Perthes syndrome at age 7. You can look it up but, in a nutshell the head of the femur (that's the big ball that fits in your hip socket) loses its blood supply so it gets very soft and wears down and deforms the ball. Yup - it no longer articulates smoothly in the socket, causing lots of pain, future arthritis blah, blah, blah. Three months in a hospital in traction seemed to get the blood supply flowing again, but the damage was done. That's what they did back in the 60's, so I'm not sure how they treat it now.

As an adult, my left leg ended up being about 3/4" shorter than the right, I walked with a natural limp, pretty much constant pain and chewing up to 10 regular aspirins a day. Thank God I have a cast iron stomach. I found I could relieve some of the discomfort by walking and standing with a slight forward stoop Spending 40 years or so with my pelvis 3/4" off level and stooped over forward naturally put a some stress on the lower spine, and I always had a little resulting lower back ache.

I eventually had the left hip replaced at about age 45 or 46, and the doctor was kind enough to put the 3/4" back on my leg. Hip pain and limp was cured instantly. My theory is that as a result of the new hip, straightening up the pelvis and stoop added a new stress to the lower back. kind of like flexing a piece of aluminum back and forth.

I'll toss in the fact that around age 10 I had another bone disease, Osgood-Schlatter in both knees at different times.

Hmmm! The plot thickens.

What is this blog about?

First, I hope you'll excuse my lack of blogging knowledge while I get this thing rolling. The purpose of this blog is to share the small part of my life, almost 2 years now, that I have spent dealing with this thing called spinal stenosis. Hopefully I will be able to encourage and enlighten those of you who are experiencing something similar, or who are just curious.

I know there are a lot of other far more serious and life-threatening medical topics such as cancer, heart disease etc., so spinal stenosis is just a drop in the bucket of the magnitude of suffering others are experiencing. Nevertheless it is still painful, debilitating and frustrating.

Since I am just starting the blog now, I will create back-fill posts with most of my experiences leading up to this point, continuing on through the surgery and recovery period, and maybe throw in a few post-recovery follow ups down the road.

I've always been a positive thinker with a streak of off-the-wall Far Side-ish humor, so bear with
me while I try to create something useful and maybe even a teensy bit entertaining. In fact, for
some strange reason these days, I seem to view most situations as if they were Far Side
cartoons, so I may even try my hand at including some rough cartoons. Warning - my drawing
skills are at a kindergarten level, and my humor is weird and somewhat rude-imentary, but hey -
everyone has to start somewhere. Gary Larson has nothing to worry about, that's for sure.

Now, let's begin at the beginning, and please, no complaints about the grammar. iPad will assist with the spelling.