Medical Updates From the RV

Greetings Earthlings!  Things are progressing in fits and starts on the medical front.  Here is today's update.

I do not have to have surgery on the torn labrum.  If a torn labrum is causing pain it will hurt in the crease formed by the top of the leg and the bottom of the torso, towards the mid-line.  Although the labrum is torn, it's minor and not worth fixing.  What's causing my hip to hurt is trochanteric bursitis.  The cause was because my left leg was shorter than the right leg; something had slipped under something (I can't remember anything).  He pulled my something out from under the something by strenuously and abruptly pulling on my left leg.  That was stage one.  It's being treated with physical therapy (clam shells and monster walking) and today there was a shot of cortisone over the tendon.  The cortisone did not hurt, he used a tiny needle and numbing stuff in the syringe.  It may or may not hurt over the next two days, I may or may not have the cortisone flush over the next few days.  The doctor thinks I should get 5 or so months relief.  The main thing is to keep the hip strengthened so my something does not again slip under the something again.

And then there's Jim and his pinched nerve at L2/L3.  He had the epidural cortisone injection on July 31.  As expected, it was of little value.  Today we saw the surgeon.  He's willing to fix it, Jim is still a good surgical candidate.  First we must get clearance from the cardiologist and clearance from the primary physician up here.  We can't get in to see the PCP until next Thursday (8/22).   Until we see the PCP we can't get on the surgery schedule.  We're probably looking at first week in September.  That will put us here through October.  October can be nice, but we'd rather be gone.  Or October can be like it was in 2017, where we had atmospheric rivers of water pointed at us for multiple days.  If you missed the first post about the troubles, you can find it here.

Finally, here is a really cool tweet, from Twitter.  It's a giant fish gun that transports spawning salmon across a dam.  It transports the fish quickly and expends virtually none of their energy.  The video is a minute long, so it's probably not all that much bandwidth.  Check it out, it's pretty cool.  Tweet is here.