We can rebuild him. We have the technology.

November 30th, 2015...a date which will live with the other three.

On October 3rd, 2011, I had my right knee replaced. It had been hurting with varying degrees of agony since the early 1970s. After surgery it hurt less, but never really stopped hurting until the summer of 2014.

On December 16th and 30th, 2013, I had my cataract-slimed lenses replaced with Bausch and Lomb implants. That was amazingly cool, to wake up and see better than I had in years.

On June 6th, 2014, I had a minimally invasive right hip replacement, and within a couple of months my right leg was nearly pain free. But!

In the fall, I was still using my cane on dog walks, just for extra stability. I had to stop, however, because my left shoulder was beginning to hurt so horribly. I figured the pain would subside after a while of not using the cane. It didn't. In the spring of  '15 I told my doctor about it. She gave me a steroid shot. No effect. We moved to Tennessee, we bought a condo, I was remodeling the kitchen, and my shoulder started getting rushes of pins and needles that continued down my left arm to my wrist, leaving me breathless with pain. I told my Tennessee doctor the whole story. He sent me to physical therapy. I learned to stop the pins and needles thing (yay) but I also learned that now I couldn't lift my left arm above chest level - very counter-productive for kitchen remodeling. Three weeks of physical therapy showed us that a) the pain was getting worse and b) the mobility was not getting any better. My doctor called me back in and sent me to a neurosurgeon, who sent me to get an MRI, which showed that the C5 nerve coming out of my neck was being pinched by a bone spur. That's the nerve that tells my muscles to lift my arm above chest level. Surgery was the only hope. No big deal. They would simply slash open my neck in the front, move my throat parts out of the way, and go into my neck vertebrae with shovels and rakes and implements of destruction. Ten days later, I was scrubbed and shaved and prepped for surgery. They removed an assortment of bone fragments, fused together four levels, installed some screws, and closed me up again.

When I awoke on November 30th, my shoulder pain was gone. I had a sore throat, some difficulty swallowing, and some constipation, but that was a good trade for the blinding pain I'd had in my shoulder. By Wednesday, I was able to raise my arm all the way in front of me. Today, I raised it all the way out to the side. My sore throat and other issues are gone. My neck pain is gone. The only way I know that all that was real and not a bad dream is the big bandage on my neck, and the hard plastic cervical collar I wear at all times. The bandage comes off tomorrow, leaving Steri-Strips to keep me together until they come loose on their own.

I spent a long long lifetime whining about doctors and how I didn't trust them and refused to have anything to do with them. It took getting old and running out of other choices to admit that there are many doctors that really can and will help me feel better.

Damn it!