OW. My legs are not happy with me right now,

That’s because I’ve had another busy (by my sessile standards) day with Wound Care in the morning and an appointment with my neurologist Doctor Madhani at noon.

Wound Care went off without a hitch, as usual. The only notable thing was that the nurse said the wound on my right foot it getting to be very small and shallow, so that’s a good thing. Hopefully it will heal up completely and stop causing me to develop awild, crazy, out of control callus on that foot.

Although I suppose that if my wound was gone but the callus remained, it would just mean having to get it pared down every couple of months so that it doesn’t start making me walk with a list to the opposite side.

Then we drove home, and that’s when I had my really dumb idea.

See, by then, ir was around 10:10 AM, and we had planned to leave for Doctor Madhani’s office at 10:50 AM to make sure we got there in time for my appointment at noon, I figured I would save myself the trip up to the apartment and back by just hanging out in our car listening to the radio (yay Jack FM!) as it sat in our parking structure until it was time to go.

I had this great picture in my mind of me just drowsing there while my beloved 80’s music played on the radio and

Genius, right? Wrong.

Because what if something happened and I needed Julian’s help> Lacking a cell phone (I know), I had no way to contact him.

And without him, I couldn’t even get out of the car because I need him to get my walker out of the back seat and set it up for me.

And without it, I might make it to the elevator but that would be pointless because by the time it got to our floor, I would lack the leg strength to get out again.

Plus I had to pee. ^[1]

This all kept me from relaxing like I meant to do. Instead, I listening to the radio and cursed myself out for being an idjit.

But whatever. I tried something and it didn’t work. Big deal.

I think I am finally getting the hang of this whole “I may be a person who has to run into a lot of trees before he figures out he’s in a forest” type thing.

Anyhow, then, after a brief stop at Real Canadian Superstore so Julian could get some diet root beer for Joe (that stuff is hard to find these days), we were off to the office of Doctor Madhani so she could electrocute me.

But that’s a story for Part 2 of today’s blog entry. The story leading up to this point took up a lot more room than I thought.

More after the break.

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Part 2 : Shock and Awe

But mostly shock.

OK, so, I went to Doctor Madhani’s office. Her receptionist settled me in and then she came along to administer the tests.

And I was not kidding about the electrocution. The first tests were nerve conductivity tests, and as the name suggests, those involve finding out just how conductive your nerves are by running increasing amounts of current through them.

So what happened was that Doctor Madhani had me lie down on the exam bed and hold out my arm and she then touched my arm at various points and made the muscles twitch as the current ran through the various nerves.

For the most part, this did not hurt. There were a few of the more intense zaps that did in fact hurt, but all that happened for most of them was the odd experience of seeing your muscles do something you never told them to do.

That doesn’t come up much in everyday life. Most of the time, if our motor muscles do something, it’s because we told them to do it.

So it was a mildly disturbing and/or amusing sight to watch my muscles twitch about.

Then the second part was coming up. Doctor Madhani said she was going to “insert an acupuncture sized needle into my skin and then move it around to take samples of various parts of my muscles ”

And that sounded absolutely horrible.

Was she seriously talking about taking tiny pieces of my muscle tissue out with a needle? While I was still awake? And doing this for many muscles?!?

No, thank God. The “samples” she spoke of were, believe it or not, sound samples(no really), not a zillion tiny pieces of my living fucking flesh.

In retrospect, I wish I had told her that her introduction for the procedure needed work. For starters, she needs to specify that these will be SOUND samples.

See, what they do to test the neurological response of your muscles is to pass a light current through them and then that current is turned into sound (static) by the machine and she listens to and records that sound.

This is a brilliant way to present the information because it uses the same part of our mind that understands music and recognizes patterns in other sounds to take what could be a very confusing mishmash of information and turn it into something you can actually hear instead.

Anyhow, compared to the torture I thought it would be, the procedure was a breeze. The needle going in hurt a bit, but the moving it around did not.

Apparently some people find the whole thing very painful.

You know, the evidence that I have a high pain threshold is really adding up. I wonder if that is part of why I tend to leave medical issues too long before I report them,

On the other hand, Doctor Madhani said I was “so good” and that she “wishes all her patients were as good as me”.

And that was nice. I must admit. I am, in general, a very docile and cooperative patient, as long as some fool nurse isn’t digging around in my veins like a hog hunting truffles.

The way I see it, why resist? These people are trying to help me, and I am there voluntarily, so I have already tacitly agreed to cooperate, and fighting back almost always makes things hurt a lot more, so… why fight?

As that nurse found out, I reserve the right to get mad if things go badly. But otherwise, I am a happy little lamb.

At the end, Doctor Madhani told me that she detected a few mild problems in my arm muscles and a few pretty major ones in my legs muscles.

well I could have told her that.

She’s going to go over her results and call me either tomorrow, Friday, or next Monday.

She raised the possibility of needing to get an actual sample of the muscle tissues.

Boy, I hope that means a traditional biopsy under general anesthetic.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.