Health worries

I don't usually put my current health worries in the worldwide domain, but these affect my plans for the CB

I have a condition called tethered cord syndrome (see my TCS website). I live with chronic pain (meaning it has lasted for more than 3 months) and have occasional flare-ups in pain and symptoms. These I can cope with as the pain is the same - the spinal and leg and feet nerves jangling, elastic-band feeling of tension on the sciatic nerve in R leg, excessive tiredness etc

But now I have a different type of pain and my mobility is affected.

The new type is affecting the way I walk - it is a tightness of the sciatic nerve, twanging on evry step. My R knee is turning inwards (which it never did) and all my muscles hurt like hell, my legs go from under me, my back and ankle joints get stiff as a board. Now, I have walked 6 miles along Hadrian's Wall a couple of months ago and for me that is like doing the London Marathon. Why on earth do I now have this new pain when I haven't done anything different to what I usually do?!?!?

I don't usually go off on one about the TCS, but this is an exception. I hate this thing, I hate the fact it stops me doing things, I hate the constant pain and disability, when my brain and heart say I want to be the active one and walk, walk, walk. I hate my deformed feet which make me different from everyone else - enduring the stares and "ooh, look at that, she is weird" label that I get from everyone who doesn't know me well. I hate the fact that the pain comes along without warning and makes me AB-SO-LUTE-LY exhausted, but I have to keep going as I don't want to take time out from work (both of them). I detest the fact that "this is it - no more improvement in your condition" and there is not a blind thing I can do about the TCS and its results - no more can I fly to the moon, can I escape this thing. I know it will lead to full, wheel-chair disability in fewer years than I would like, and I hate that too - why the hell do I have to stop doing things just because my feet are going to give up before the rest of me (which is what happens now).

OK, rant over.

However, one of my worries about the CB is that I will have a flare-up and it will stop me doing/seeing/experiencing once-in-a-lifetime things. I just pray that being as fit as I am, I can overcome the flare-ups and they won't be too bad. However when I walk a lot, my feet get exhausted quicker than I do, and that will also stop me doing things

Why did I have to be the mug who ended up with this TCS? OK, mine isn't as bad as some people I know on the TCS grapevine, but it still makes me different and I oh so wish it didn't affect me.

Next blog: back to CB subjects properly.