My Trip to America July 2012 Part II

Hi Dwyllis@evidently your spine is getting back in order :)) I remember your comment some weeks ago :))
Thank you very much for another educational blog. The Painted Ladies houses are beautiful, it must be pleasure (and expensive) to live in. Reminds me houses and porcelain in Delft, the Netherlands. Place of painters.

Hi Dwyllis .. Entertaining blog...
Great selection of photos.
Beautiful gardens and flowers ..
and lovely grandchildren !

Dwylis@I see one way how to enter Alcatraz :)))

What lovely children...they look as if they really love each other :))) I bet it was quite a wrench to leave them. Hope it's not too long before you see them again.

The Painted Ladies are beautiful, so unusual.It's so nice to see things like this preserved for the future. As for that giant bear...it's fantastic! Thank you for sharing your trip with us :)

Katarina .....are you thinking you could parachute in? Lol. It is probably more a case of needing to find a way out. I think the story is that no-one ever managed to escape from Alcatraz? With regard to my spine, I have better days & I have bad days. No good days yet, but I am hopeful that hinges will settle down without he need to resort to surgical intervention. However, the specialist gave me two additional weeks to see if the disc is going to stabilise & nerve compression improves. I will see him again in five days. On some days I think things are really doing well, but then on other days I have a lot of pain in my foot, & top of my thigh at the back, from the sciatic nerve compression. That makes walking painful, & I have now been off work for a number of weeks. The specialist told me it could take up to six months for this to settle down on its own, or it might never do that. I think he will insist on me seeing the orthopaedic surgeon, to see whether he thinks removing that part of the disc will work. I cannot stay off work indefinitely, nor do I want to. And although I have been told that my job on the ward is safe, as this is a work-related injury & I am on full pay, I do worry about what will happen with my job if I keep putting a visit to the surgeon of. The hospital insurers, who are covering my salary, won't be very happy with me. I will have to see how it goes on Tuesday. They say if things have not settled down within six weeks of injury, it is unlikely to do so on its own.

Thank you Waddy. Yes, they are good with one another, though the little one has begun to bite his sister when she teases or annoys him, which is a problem. On our visit to Mackinac Island, my OH & I went off to look in a shop & when we came out, we could hear this child crying really loudly. I looked at my OH & said that it sounded like Cicilei, so we hurriedly rushed in the direction of the commotion, & there was Cicilei being carried in her mum's arms, crying like crazy, with Omar sitting in his pushchair all big-eyed. He had bitten her so hard on the upper arm that his teeth had broken the skin. But generally speaking they do get on relatively well. I can remember having some big 'arguments' with my brother of two years older, & we almost drove our poor mother mad. It was a wrench to leave them, & we know it will be years before we can afford to go again, as we visited with them two years in a row. However, it was also lovely to be back home again in our own little space, enjoying the quiet of it all.

Dwyllis@I think David Copperfield once dissappered from Alcatraz and then re-appeared in Bratislava. Since that time he has never repeated that number, LOL.
The way how to get there is very easy - you must commit some original crime :)

Katarina ...when I first read your comment, I was thinking David Copperfield = Charles Dickens ....& could not quite make the connection between CD & Alcatraz. Lol. Then I clicked .....DC the magician! Oh yes, only he could be the great escapee! And yes, it did not take much to get into that foreboding place, as you say. Easier if you were part of The Mob. :)

Lol. Evidently you didn´t see this dramatic number of DC :))
And that re-appearance in Bratislava (Slovak capital) is true. In nineties I walked in one street in the evening and noticed a man who evidently was liitle bit out of usual Slavic physiognomy. Then click - I realised it is D. Copperfield. I said to friend, look, DC! He said, nooo, he just looked similar. But the guy had car with Austrian mark. Some weeks later we got information from newpapers, that his actual girl friend is one Austrian model, whose name I forgot now :))
So, all what I said, was true.

Oh my! There are wonderful places in the world! Thanks for sharing!

Dwyllis@when I studied medicine, my research work was dedicated to analysis of physical outcomes of patients with herniation/proptrusion of intervertebral discs. To clearly define outcomes of those who underwent immediate operation after herniaton/protrusion of the disc and those, who delayed operations. Total number of operated and analysed patients was around 1000. The result was quite clear. The most beneficial for patients was immediate operation (within 7 days if there was neurologic symptomatology indicative for OP). Those, who were operated later, let say, after months of chronic symptoms, they usually stayed more or less symptomatic even after operation. Explanation is easy - the longer is the afflicted nerve root irritated, the higher is the risk of adverse consequences, like inflammation, adhesions, destruction of the peripheral nerve etc.

Oh dear Katarina. That does not sound very promising for a full recovery if I have surgery. My specialist told me two weeks ago that I score 2.5 out of 3 for neurological symptoms, & he said the higher the score, the better outcome the surgery would have. Apparently, if a patient scores just 1 or 1.5 out of 3, the specialist does not refer to the orthopaedic surgeon for surgery, as there is not so much neurological damage, so surgery will not make a lot of difference. As I score 2.5 out of 3, the specialist said that I should benefit from surgery. He said back pain level would remain about the same, but relieving the compression on the sciatic nerve, would greatly improve the awful pain & weakness down my left leg. I was really not at all keen on having the surgery, as I thought it would settle down on its own with rest & careful exercises ( walks mainly). And some days the pain is not so bad, but those are the days that I have not walked the dog around the block, so have just been walking inside my house & out into the back garden. When I walk the dog around the block, the pain flares up a bit, but really kicks in within a couple of hours & then is bad for several more hours. Yesterday, I had had enough of watching my lawns growing longer & longer, & as my husband works full time & is tired when he gets home in the evening, & we have had rain every weekend when he could mow them .....I decided to mow the back lawns. It took me over an hour, & the pain kicked in about an hour later. By yesterday evening I was in more pain than I have had for some time time. I could have cheerfully cut my foot off, the pain was so bad ...& right from top of my thigh through the entire leg. Even prescription pain relief didn't touch this nerve pain & burning. When I got up this morning, my foot was still painful, but not so bad in the rest of my leg, so I went with my husband when he walked the puppy, & now resting. I really hope now that the surgeon does think surgery will benefit me, otherwise I am going to be off work for weeks more ....or maybe not able to return to work at all. Thank you for that information.

Good evening, I think - regarding what you say - there is no reason to wait until your score for operation reaches the top. And do not worry, that operation is nt complicated and you will be able to return to work. In these days there are instruments which in some cases enable so called microdiscectomy, with minimal invasive procedure. Patient is enabled to walk on the other day after operation and after a week has to start with spinal excercises. Usually the pooperative rehabilitation takes 6 weeks.

Katarina, I asked the specialist if they would do the micro surgery & he said no, they would make a three inch incision over the lumbar vertebrae along the spine. So more invasive than the micro surgery. I'll let you know what happens after I see him on Tuesday. :)

OK.
That´s what they said to you is a classic access/ operation then. But as I said, it depends on the size and location of the protrusion.

Enjoyed both blogs Dwyllis, smashing photographs, I guess the way to stay select in some of these places is to make living and also visiting too expensive for us working class mere mortals, oh well one can dream, lol.....
Sorry you are still having problems with your injury, it sounds really painful at times, you take care.......