The end of April 2025 will mark 14 years since the onset of polyradiculitis...
In late April 2011, my sister was visiting from Florida. We met at a restaurant to celebrate my birthday. As I shared about my new pet-sitting service, I told her that I had to purchase a smart phone to run the business. I then said, as I balanced my newly acquired, palm-sized computer in my left hand, "These smart phones sure are heavy."
Little did we know what was about to transpire...
Within a week, all my limbs suddenly turned to rubber...
My sister later shared, "I thought it unusual when you made that comment because smart phones are not heavy..."
It took two years and eight doctors to receive a proper diagnosis.
It took another three years to discover an underlying cause.
~*~
Journal entry, 4/13/25
Yes, I feel I've experienced a shift...
It probably began on March 21, 2025...
That is when I (again) began to consciously walk and hold my body in better form, and I began to use my arms differently.
I've lived with praying mantis arms for over a decade, though I used to get relief with cervical spine trigger point injections and lumbar epidurals. Every six weeks, for over eight years, I'd received some sort of injection(s) into my spinal cord area.
My last lumbar epidural was the week of April 11th, 2022; I think I received it on Thursday, April 14, 2022.
Little did I know it'd be my last...On April 28, 2022, I landed in the hospital for three nights; two good-sized blood clots, one in each lung.
I and my wellness team were all stunned.
I was then told that any more epidurals were too risky; the combination of epidurals and blood thinners is a high-risk recipe for paralysis. I became terrified...
Without the epidurals, how could I remain mobile?
That same week, one of my providers began offering low-level laser therapy.
It's proven to be a godsend.
Still without the lumbar epidurals, the cervical trigger point injections did not work as well.
I gave them up too (in addition to the epidurals).
It's all steroids; the tiny relief I got with the cervical injections didn't justify the side effects. My arms, already suffering from muscle atrophy, weakness, and shooting pains, became weaker, especially my biceps.
Thus, praying mantis arms became my norm, until the last weekend of March 2025. Praying mantis arms: When a person has to keep their arms, from their elbows to their shoulders, close to their torso for support. If one has to reach, she moves super slow, concentrating, supporting the arm hopefully mitigating any kapow-bang-drop response.
Sigh...
Do I really want to write about this?
Haven't I written enough about life with polyradiculitis, whom I've come to name Poly Rad?
To personify it seems to somehow lessen the fear.
Why is that?
Does personification bring it out of the scary condition that it is?
Like bringing it out of the shadows.
Or like exposing that there is no boogey man under the bed.
Does personification lighten up the heaviness?
Oh my god, the heaviness...
Like my body was filled with iron slivers and Earth was trying to suck me right into her core.
I would sometimes lay in my backyard, rolling from side to side in tears, looking up at the clouds and trees swaying in the breeze; they made movement look so easy.
But it wasn't iron slivers in my body.
It was cobalt and chromium slowly poisoning my body from within, a defective hip implant leeching its metals for over eight years.
In 2016, the defective implant was explanted and replaced.
I no longer have the heaviness.
That's a good thing.
~*~
Today, April 15, 2025
I'm practicing to retrain my arms so that I am no longer a praying mantis.
Or maybe I am, just in a human costume.
~*~
