Oh, and just to add…
It’s not easy to remember everything important that’s happened since OD went on hiatus. It just occurred to me that OD went Tango Uniform in early 2014, I had a rather eventful 2015. To start with, I found what I originally thought was a pimple on top of my head in early spring of 2015. It never went away though, so I finally went to my doctor after a couple of months. My suspicions were confirmed, it was a skin cancer about the size of a quarter. He referred me to a dermatologist who sliced off a piece and had it confirmed by a lab. Basal cell carcinoma fortunately, one of the least aggressive forms of skin cancer. The dermatologist had me back in after the lab results came back so she could remove it, she just gave me a local and cut a big plug out of my scalp right there in the office then cauterized it as she went. It healed up nicely and hasn’t recurred, it’s been almost three years now and I get checked once a year now so I’ve been lucky so far.
The second thing that happened in 2015 was my old neck injury from racing cars finally needed attention. I woke up one Sunday morning with tingling and numbness in my right hand and elbow. After a week of it not going away I went to the doctor who referred me for an MRI on my neck. My first attempt was a failure because I was in so much pain with my neck in the position they wanted it that I had to ask to be released after about 10 minutes. The second attempt went better, the doctor gave me two muscle relaxers and a pain pill to take before I went. I was so high that I needed to stand on a stepladder to scratch my own butt when I got there but it worked, I managed to get through it. They found the lower two cervical discs to be swollen and contacting the nerves in my spine and the neurologist wanted me to have surgery that week. I asked for three weeks so I could finish a project at work (and to be perfectly honest I wanted a little time to put my affairs in order because the idea of having my head mostly separated from my body with my spine in two pieces scared me to death) and they operated. Imagine that, in this day and age they remove two discs from your neck and put everything back together with titanium hardware as outpatient surgery. It went fairly well, my neck was better than it’s been in years but they did do something to my spinal column that caused some effects that have been permanent so far. When I came out of the anesthetic I had significant weakness in both legs. I finally got enough strength back to show them I could walk with minimal assistance and the outpatient surgery place was getting ready to close so they wheeled me out and stuck me into the backseat of my car at 5:30 that afternoon. When I got home we had to borrow a walker from our next door neighbor to get me into the house and I used the walker most of the time for the next 3-4 days while regaining my strength. I also found that I had limited sensation at the surface of my skin on my lower left quadrant, basically from mid-chest on down on the left side. The weakness/numbness on my left side seems to be getting slightly worse but I still get around.
I’ll probably think of other things to write about later.