Last month I bought a bike. Nothing fancy. Just a simple cruiser to pedal around our neighborhood and stretch my legs. I always enjoy walking the dogs, but decided it would be fun to add a bike into the exercise mix. It's been interesting riding around the hood. Most of the traffic I encounter is the golf cart sort. And squirrels crossing my path rather than automobiles.
Unfortunately, all of my exercise came to a grinding halt a few weeks ago when I slept at a "bad angle" and woke up with aggravated compressed vertebra in my neck... AKA a pinched nerve. This always causes me to suffer muscle spasms, which bring me to my knees in a world of hurt. Thanks to my concierge doc back home, I survived this flareup on muscle relaxers, pain meds and a steroid pack until I could drive myself and the dogs our almost six hour route home into the hill country for an MRI. More on that later.
I'm afraid I may be entering that era where my big life updates are becoming more about ailments. A friend and I were laughing at ourselves recently, swapping stories about my wonky neck and her ankle issues. Honestly, this neck thing of mine is old news. My compressed vertebra first came to light way back in 1998. My dad had the same issue, and needed surgery for it in his 40s. Despite several flareups over the past 27 years, I've always been able to baby my neck back to normal with rest, meds and physical therapy. The main thing is time because there is no quick fix. Exactly two weeks from the start of this recent flareup, I didn't wake up in tremendous pain and dare I say my neck is feeling almost like its regular old middle-aged self again. Praise the Lord, y'all, our Great Physician at work in my life.
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