I know it's been a long while since I've been on. I wound up with serious health problems and am currently recovering from surgery. It's been hard to use my hands so the computer has been difficult. I now have screws in my neck and can't move my head from side to side at all. I need to turn my whole body to see to my left or right. IT also means I can never drive again. I had to give up my car.
It's from spinal stenosis and what happened is my spine was actually starting to separate from the base of my skull. It usually only happens in accidents where the stress and strain from a person's head whipping back and forth damages the spine. My doctors don't know for sure why this happened. If you google internal decapitation you'll see what it is. They tell me that if I hadn't had such bad pain in my shoulders they wouldn't have realized what was going on. The shoulder pain is called referred pain and was caused my the spine problem. Go figure! I was slowly losing the ability to lift my hands higher than my shoulders or reach behind myself. I couldn't lean on a table or lift anything heavy. They told me that because my spine was actually moving up and down it was interfering with the base of my brain and I could have gone to sleep and not woken up. That completely freaked out my sister.
This all happened right after I moved. I decided what was important to me...my music (albums, cd and my keyboard sheet music), my pets, my knitting and crochet, my plants and my cooking and baking. I had lots of help from friends and my sister to go through all my stuff and get rid of what was no longer important. Of course, a huge part of what I kept was for hamsters.
I still have Laddie Boy, my dwarfie. He's still very active. I have never been able to hold him, although I can pet him in his cage. I've never had a hamster who absolutely refused to be picked up. But I let him guide me. He's getting old now but you would never know it by how busy he is.
Thankfully, it turned out that the trouble I was having with my shoulders has completely disappeared since the day of the surgery. The healing has taken a lot of time and they tell me it will be at least 6 months to a year for full healing. But I can do things that I thought I wouldn't ever be able to do again. It's amazing. I can't wait for Spring. I can garden again!
It's only been about 2 weeks since I started baking again. House cleaning will be next, although my sister tells me to slow down. She's been great. She takes me to any doctor appointments, comes and cleans up after the dog, takes out the garbage and shops for me if I need anything. She was the one who took care of Yoda and Laddie while I was in the hospital and the rehab. I can't imagine what I would have done without her.
So, life is definitely looking better. I will try to keep up here, but I'll start slow...my hands still get numb after typing for a while. No matter what, hamsters will always be a part of my life.
