Roots, no longers, healing springs...

In the last few years, I've said to Hubby, "I think I know what it feels like to be old." ("Old" meaning "elderly." But I didn't use the word "elderly" when talking to Hubby; I used "old.")

I've said that because of polyradiculitis and the hell it's been to live, including the side effects of long-term steroids.

The slowness of my body. The muscle atrophy. The thinning hair. The thinning, fragile skin. The bone loss. The heaviness. The trembles. The fatigue. The cognitive dysfunction. The isolation. The monitoring for diabetes, glaucoma, adrenal and heart dysfunction. The assistance I sometimes needed to bathe and dress. The assistance I still need to trim my fingernails and toenails.

The giving-up much of my 2D and 3D social life. The giving-up of walks and hiking and backpacking and my dream of thru-hiking the Appalachian Trail. The giving-up of cleaning the house, gardening, doing the laundry, meal prep, shopping...that kind of stuff. Though I do occasionally shop in short intervals, and can now sometimes even do laundry.

Then there are/have been the symptoms that typically aren't necessarily associated with aging. Iron deficiency. Vertigo. Migraines. Numbness and pain and tingling and bizarre sensations in my limbs. To name a few.

Poly means many or multiple.
Rad means root.
Itis means inflammation.
Multiple roots inflamed.
Nerve roots at my spinal cord, inflamed.

My whole body is affected. But the symptoms have become less severe since adding Charlotte's Web Hemp Extract to my regimen in 2015 and since my revision hip replacement surgery in 2016 to replace the recalled, defective, metal-leaching implant. Again slicing open my left thigh about six inches, downward from my hip. Cutting through layers of skin and muscle and tissue.

I have a scar there from my first hip replacement in August, 2008. I also have a deformity alongside the scar, a lump. It's supposedly fatty tissue that built up after the first surgery. I recently read that some lumps are caused by leaching metals. I wonder if that was the case for me. I'm not going to ask about that; there's nothing more to be done.

I saw the orthopedic surgeon last Thursday, August 2nd. I sometimes still have low level pain in that hip, and sometimes a catch...

And here I am. My mind going all over the place. This subject is so huge. Huge. Because I live with pain all over my body. Literally. The soles of my feet, the palms of my hands, my shins, my forearms, my biceps, my knees, my thighs, my left hip area where the scalpels have gouged and danced. And my low back. And migraines, which have mostly abated since I gave up cheese and yogurt and sauerkraut and pickles.

But, thankfully, I no longer suffer intense pain. The pain now is mainly tenderness. Sometimes an electric bolt. Most often a low ache, soreness. Occasional numbness in two of my fingers. My routine lumbar epidurals and neck shots give relief.

I no longer suffer the other bizarre symptoms inside my forearms. Feelings of heavy, wet sand moving around like mercury. And little Mario men all lined up on either side of my forearm bone, their feet pressed against my bone while they play tug-o-war pulling on my tendons, back and forth, back and forth. And the pins and needles in my wrists and hands and fingers and ankles and feet and toes. The numbness in my fingers and hands, like I was wearing boxing gloves.

I no longer have the severe weakness in my arms, so much so that I couldn't lift a soda can to my lips.

I no longer have pain in my neck and jaws. I occasionally still have weakness in my jaws, but not like it used to be.

I no longer feel the weight, like I have a dead body strapped to me. Or like my body is filled with slivers of iron and that Earth is trying to suck me into her magnetic core.

Those were such bizarre times. And it's only part of the story. It sounds unbelievable. It was a terrifying time.

I still have to move slowly, deliberately. I'm used to it now. It's my new normal.

But, my pace has picked up from the terrifying days. Hubby recently said I now move a little quicker than his mom. Or maybe it's that her pace has slowed down. For a few years, my pace was slower than hers. She's 83. I'm 59.

But when I'm riding my bike, I can move fast, for me. An observer wouldn't even know I'm disabled, until I dismount. Those wheels are my freedom.

I'm going to Virginia tomorrow to bike a section of the New River rail trail. As usual, I'm going solo. But I don't feel alone on the trail. Because of the trees and the birds and the deer and the cows and the river and the rocks...and the history. People once rode a train on that trail to get to the healing sulfur springs of Grayson County.