Remember that very last day of high school, or the day you first got your driver’s license and you stepped outside feeling like the world was your oyster and you could do ANYTHING?! Well, that’s exactly what I felt when my doctor gave me approval to drive again! WEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! Hello world (again)!!!! I had been cooped up in a hospital room for 3 months, followed by another month at home having to rely on my family to drive me everywhere, so now I feel like I’ve got freedom to do what I want, when I want! Of course the first thing I did was make up an excuse to run to the drugstore and around the block a few times just because I could! Yay! My social life can finally come out of the dark and show its face again! 😀 Then, after walking around CVS a few times, I remembered that I still have to work on endurance and balance, which makes walking around too long and carrying things a bit of a challenge. I’m not saying “obstacle”, just a challenge. It’s motivating me even more to keep up with my physical training and get my body back in to fighting shape! Minus the fighting… I’m just not into that.

To continue with my “motivation” mantra, I’ve been making every effort to progress toward a less tool-reliant mobile life. I’ve been using the walker a LOT instead of the chair, and now I’ve graduated to the cane! I’ve been practicing around the house at first, and today was the first day “out” with the cane, and boy did I feel it! (Before you ask, you use different muscles to balance with a cane vs/the walker, hence me collapsing on the couch when I got home rubbing my sore right hip and booty!) One problem – which is actually a good one – is that my leg brace has gotten a bit too loose now. The swelling in my leg has really gone down! It’s still more swollen than my right leg due to the blood clots (which we’re still treating), but now that it’s shrunk, the brace keeps slipping down which doesn’t help me in any way. I’ve been wrapping my leg with ace bandages and socks to add “bulk” to keep them up and supportive, but I need to get refitted for a new one if this continues.

While I’ve been excited about how well I’ve been able to start walking again, the core of the problem is still not fixed. The nerves feel a bit tingly now in my leg, which is good, however, I still can’t move the lower half of my left leg the way it should, so without my brace, I feel like I have rubber-leg and can buckle/fall with every step. Needless to say, my confidence flies out the window the minute I take the brace off and I end up walking in tiny baby steps holding on to everything I see. I saw a neurologist last week to discuss what can be done. We did an MRI and she wants me to get a sonogram of the nerves in my leg (which apparently is so new that none of the Baylor hospitals have one. There is only one hospital out of their network that has one, so she’s trying to get me in to get it done). Otherwise, she said what every other doctor has said…that nerves are funny and you never know when they will or won’t grow back! I was half-satisfied with that, until she started to blame this on my diabetes! Um… this leg thing happened exactly the day after my surgery, not gradually. AND my leg was working PERFECTLY fine before that, thank you! I hate when a doctor wants to hang their every diagnosis on the fact that I have diabetes. UGH! I understand it might take longer to heal because of it, but it wasn’t the CAUSE of this! I’ll give her another chance to see what she says after these tests, but if she still insists that diabetes caused this, I’m getting a second opinion with someone who hopefully has less tunnel vision!

Changing to a more positive update, I think they’ve fixed the leaky mysterious hole in my kidney/lymph node/wherever it is! I had a procedure a week ago where instead of injecting “glue” into my drain again to stop the leak, they injected something that must have been some sort of acid, because whatever they injected was meant to really scar up the area where the drain was coming from…and it burned like a MF! Then they had me on bed rest for an hour (while this acid stayed in my drain area – my lymph node???? I really need to ask them about this detail). I rotated like a rotisserie chicken to make sure this acid-stuff got into all nicks and crannies on all sides of the area. I was clawing at the ceiling by the time he finally took it out, but I now have no more drain, and have had no issues since!! I’m praying that this has solved the mystery leak!! Yay! One more victory!

So, given all that’s happened these past couple of weeks, I’d say life is good and getting better, and that freeway is looking a lot less bumpy!

Link to donate:

For Financial – Help Hope Live – https://helphopelive.org/campaign/27559

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Things I’m thankful for today:

1. My bedroom – I’ve finally moved back upstairs to my own space and it feels good! My bed, my stuff, my privacy…

2. My brace – keeps me from spending half the day picking myself off the floor!

3. Rubber “grippy” socks – keeps me from spending half the day picking myself off the floor!

4. Bruno Mars – I consider dancing to his music “excercise”. 🙂