It’s time to bring you all up to date on my medical problems. I am finding it harder and harder to walk these days and finally decided to go back to my doctor and complain. I told him if this was the way it’s going to be the rest of my life, then OK, I will live with it, but if there was any way to fix it, then I wanted to do that.
I have, basically, two problems. My legs go numb and then start to hurt after I’ve been on my feet for more than a minute or so. The back surgery I had last year was supposed to fix that but didn’t. It really had no effect at all. The second problem is that I get out of breath just crossing a room.
So, my doctor started working on the first problem by sending me to an imaging service to get a MRI. I had that done last week and the results came back saying I have two pinched nerves in my back. This is certainly causing me the back pain I feel and may be causing the leg problems also. So, they want to start by giving me a cordisone shot in the spin. They did that last year and it had no effect. But, we are going to try it again. I am going to have that done next Wednesday, October 22. If that doesn’t help, I may need surgery again. We’ll see.
I also had an appointment this week with my sleep doctor who is interested in my sleep apnea and how things are going in that respect. So, while I was there, I asked him about the shortness of breath. He said that shortness of breath can be caused by my conditioning (overweight), but more likely it was caused by some kind of heart problem. The heart is not delivering enough blood to the lungs or something like that. The lungs are not functioning properly and I can’t breathe when I have a little exersion (like walking or getting out of a chair)
So, I have to go back to my cardiologist and get another test on my heart. The doctor said there are medications I can take to fix the breathe problem. So, we’ll see what happens. It sucks to get old. I just don’t want to spend the years I have left felly miserable all the time if it can be helped.
I will try to keep you all up to date on what’s happening. Thank God for insurance. Talk to you again.
Dad