I don’t know how long this will last, but carpe diem.

My nerves are shot . . .and it is a wonderful thing!

A decade of background is in order.  Sometime in the autumn of 2006, I was working in the auto service center of a Wal-Mart on Long Island, near where I lived. That day, the store was expecting some very important visitors form the Wal-Mart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas. And so some damn fool in management insisted that every floor in the building be freshly waxed overnight.

Now it was perfectly all right to wax the floors in the store. But there is a major problem with waxing the service bays. In brief, there is oil on the floor. It does not react well with waxing. We wear shoes with oil resistant soles to help fight the oil spillage problem. They do not work on wax and oil. To make matters worse, it was raining heavily. We were having the reminents of a hurricane, which had been downgraded to a tropical storm. But we still got four inches of water.

My job was generally to write service. I would take a hand-held computing device and write customer’s orders down as they lined up their cars outside the garage. I was very, very good at this job as I had won the district’s (Long Island, New Jersey and Connecticut) two years running. Anyhow, I walked into the passenger aisle of the garage and suddenly I was looking at my feet facing the ceiling. I landed, very hard, on my neck, shoulder, arm, elbow, and hand. I was in agony. After a moment of catching my breath, I walked over to the wall and slammed my right shoulder into the wall. The shoulder had become separated and I was able to knock it back into place.

And so began a long and unhappy series of doctor visits, MRIs and worker compensation hearings and lawyer nonsense. If you ever get hurt on the job, know that worker compensation is an adversarial procedure between you and your insurance company. It took five years to get a settlement for the case and I am supposed to obtain coverage from the ongoing pain from the injuries that has redeveloped, but people can’t even find the insurance company that handled it. So I have to see doctors under Medicare and lord only knows how much this is costing me.

I would be given a series of steroid injections in the upper spine to determine if the pain could be relieved. I showed up for the procedure a couple of weeks ago and as a precaution, they monitored my heart rate. I was stunned to discover it was 155 – about 95 beats per minute above my normal. And, rightfully, the procedure was postponed.

But it’s worth it. The pain has, over the course of 2015, become unbearable. I could not sleep well, despite taking medication to help me do so. I could not lift my upper arm over my head and often had the arm in slings, along with elbow and hand braces. After five years “on the road” travelling many times from coast to coast and living in a RV travel trailer, I rarely had the opportunity to see doctors or physical therapists. I spent five-month stints during the summers of 2013 and 2014 in a small town (population 850) in the South Dakota Badlands and saw a doctor who came once a week. He had a great name – Dr. Goodhope – and he was able to manage my diabetes. He also was great about prescriptions, enabling me to get refills over the course of a year; so even though I was only there for a brief part of the year, I had some medical support.

But with my return to the New York metro area, I was able to return to my medical support system, which included a primary/pulmonologist, cardiologist, endocrinologist, surgeon and others. I was back in the medical system. It took about two months to get an appointment with my primary care doctor and, while waiting, the pain had become unbearable. I checked into an emergency room, where I was diagnosed with, in addition to neck issues causing the pain, a sub-acute stroke. Doctors tell me that a sub-acute stroke is one that has occurred in the past few days, but has not been disabling. I had been very tired, but was unaware of what was going on.

So anyhow, after being discharged from the hospital, my primary doc set me up with a bunch of appointments. The problem is that the primary doc is located on Long Island, where I had lived for more than 30 years before hitting the road. And I had settled down in Northwest New Jersey, where I had been raised. It cost me more than $100 in gas, tolls and food, including dinner with my son, every time I went there and doctors there began telling me to get help in New Jersey.

Anyhow, I thought the answer to my pain had to be spinal surgery. I had problems with five disks and so I saw a Long Island spinal surgeon. He told me that I needed to see a pain specialist first. I decided that I would see one in New Jersey and I obtained a recommendation from my companion. (“Companion” is kind of a weird way to describe our relationship. It sounds too gay. She is a woman and was my senior prom date 50 years ago. We are living together but are very apprehensive about marriage due to many New Jersey legal issues involving property.)

Anyhow, I saw him and we set a date for a procedure. I would be given a series of steroid injections in the upper spine to determine if the pain could be relieved. I showed up for the procedure a couple of weeks ago and as a precaution, they monitored my heart rate. I was stunned to discover it was 155 – about 95 beats per minute above my normal. And, rightfully, the procedure was cancelled. I had another visit to the hospital where I was stabilized with IV fluids. I was very dehydrated and was showing signs of A-fib, which is very dangerous given my stroke history.

I’m not certain if the release from pain has restored me to more normal energy or if I’m manic as a side effect. And frankly, I don’t care. I feel wonderful, better than I have since I was injured.  

I had bowel problems over the past few days and figured the cause was dehydration. But I decided to go back to Long Island to see my cardiologist (whom had checked me out only a few weeks before and I was fine). But when I arrived, my heart was running 144 beats per minute. He prescribed the appropriate meds, but insisted I get a cardiologist in New Jersey to check me the next day and have lab work done. They did so, and now my heart was back to “normal.” And so yesterday, I received the procedure.

Now I hadn’t a clue what would really happen. It being “Back to the Future Day” – the day that Marty and Doc visit the future in the trilogy – I figured I would watch the movie on my laptop while they working on me. I expected things to last about a half hour, but it only took about 10 minutes at the most. So I watched it in the recovery room. You were supposed to eat and drink something and as a diabetic, I had issues. But the pretzels they had were only a gram of sugar and they had diet soda – which tasted awful. It was out of date and soft drinks with artificial sweeteners go south in a hurry. So they gave me a diet ginger ale instead of a diet cola and that was fine. I was very pleased to learn about the low sugar count in pretzels as they will be the handouts for the trick-or-treaters and I had thought that I would have to throw them out afterwards. Instead, they will make an imperfect, low-calorie, low-sugar snack.

So I drove home, after making a side trip to nearby Wightman’s Farms and picking up the best apple cider in America. We have gotten into the habit of a hot mug of it before bedtime and I will miss it after the harvest is over. It was also late so I picked up some chili at Wendy’s for dinner. She loves their chili and I didn’t know if I would be up to making dinner.

 I woke up feeling great. There was little pain, more like a minor ache. And for the first time in nearly a decade I was able to throw a ball overhand. 

Anyhow, the side effects started shortly after 8 p.m. I began shaking badly and became quite crazed and manic. I called up the doctor and his nurse practitioner returned the call. As I described the symptoms, I mentioned that they often occurred when I was hypoglycemic – my blood sugars were too low. But in this case, they were about 450. Normal is 80-120 and if I hit 500, it’s a matter of going to the ER. Anyhow she said the steroids where probably affecting my diabetes and I took some extra medication then and calmed down in an hour though my blood sugars were still very high at around 340, they were not a cause for immediate hospitalization.

My symptoms relieved, I took my normal meds around 10 p.m., including more diabetic medicine and something to help me sleep. But I was still way too manic, but much less than I was. I still didn’t get to sleep until around 2 a.m., after watching hours of post-Mets game cable coverage. And I’m not really a Mets fan.

But the needles worked. In the morning I woke up feeling great. There was little pain, more like a minor ache. And for the first time in nearly a decade I was able to throw a ball overhand. My accuracy sucked, but I could do it. I am so looking forward to playing a game of catch with my granddaughter the next time I get to Oregon. I recently joined a gym and will also give shooting baskets and swimming freestyle a go.

It feels incredible. It's as if a huge burden was lifted from my shoulders (and I suppose it is literally true since the shoulders were the key source of pain). But I remain somewhat manic. I had let things pile up in my room and though it would take a week to clean. It was done in a couple of hours – while I was also working in the basement and doing laundry. And when I sat down to write this, I’ve gone more than 1700 words in just an hour or so. I’m not certain if the release from pain has restored me to more normal energy or if I’m manic as a side effect. And frankly, I don’t care. I feel wonderful, better than I have since I was injured. And I raring to go. So far today I’ve done all that and I’m about to hit the gym. I don’t know how long this will last, but carpe diem.

* * *

An interesting aside to the dramatic reduction of pain due to steroid injections the other day. My mind seems clearer. I can remember words much better and am more aware of what I am doing and need to do. In other words, far less scatterbrained.