Tales of a Boundary Ninja

Greetings Gentle Readers!
I have missed you all! So sorry for the worries over hurricane Sandy; thank you to everyone who wrote and was concerned. The only effect it had on our cruise was to delay us leaving port by several hours because the ship we were on was late getting into port because of the storm (by all accounts they had quite the harrowing time the night before. One waiter told us that if someone told us they weren’t scared, they were lying). Our first night at sea was a bit sloshy so to speak (I didn’t have anything to drink so I kept wondering why it was so hard to walk :)) but sleeping was wonderful because it felt like you were in a giant cradle. Our itinerary was changed a few times, but they did a brilliant job of avoiding bad weather. We had a wonderful cruise during which we did very little, which was lovely. Ironically, we were much more worried about our family, as my older daughter attends college in New York city. But both her college and dorm are much further uptown and she suffered only a very short power outage, and was thankfully otherwise safe and unaffected, unlike so many others. I have a number of friends and loved ones who were in the path of the storm and are only now getting power back and my thoughts and prayers are with everyone so hard hit by this disaster.

In another twist of irony, the aunt whom my sister and I were planning on visiting to talk to about my father lived on the Jersey shore, not that far away from where Sandy made landfall. I haven’t been able to find out anything definite, but all of the pictures from near where her home is show widespread destruction so I am totally up in the air as to when my sister and I will be able to see her. Life can be very strange.

In other news (my life is rarely boring :)) I have been having some numbness in my hands, which I had been chalking up to some kind of carpal tunnel problems as I both work and play on computers (it is not unusual for me to spend upwards of 14 hours a day at a keyboard), but when I went to the doctor, he immediately suspected a back problem, since the problem was presenting bilaterally. I attempted to go for a closed MRI and discovered, yes, I am claustrophobic. (My apologies to everyone I have silently judged in the past) but my doctor managed to get me in for an open MRI the day before I left for vacation (which was a mixed blessing). The tech looked very grim, my doctor’s wanted to see me right away, which I was unable to do since we were leaving for vacation, but I went, at their insistence, the day we returned. Only to be told, I was being referred to a specialist! Turns out that I have arthritis in my spine (a fact of which I was already aware), but evidently, some degeneration has occurred in several of my cervical vertebrae to the point that my spinal cord is being pressured which is causing the numbness in my hands. I was not experiencing any back pain UNTIL I had to lay on the MRI table for 45 minutes but now can tell you the exact location in my neck where the vertebrae are pressing. 🙂 I am hoping that a treatment plan will provide some relief mainly because, while I am not really in any significant pain, there is a loss of fine motor control, which is wrecking havoc with my typing skills. All of that is my long explanation of why even this short post has been a bit of time coming.

So I am settling back into real life and wondering where all those lovely people who were taking care of changing the sheets, doing the dishes and fulfilling my every whim have gone? This is not helped by the fact that my husband came back to 12 1/2 hour shifts (we have a dream some day of both of us once again working eight-hour days). So thank you all for your patience. I am hoping to get back into the groove and put up a more substantive post that actually talks about therapy soon. It’s good to be back, even if I do miss those little mints on my pillow and the towel animals. 😀