Don’t Just DO Something, Sit There!

Warning: Rant
For all my philosophical outlook yesterday, I’m not so emotionally detached today. I’m angry and I’m bummed out. Not only did I have the old nerve pain down my leg while I was out watching the Aurigid Meteor Shower last night, I still had it when I woke up this morning. I’m struggling with the persistent notion that if my surgeon had acted differently, things might be much easier for me today.

Was he that ignorant? Is this some consequence of managed care? Or was he just that dismissive of a patient’s complaints? Probably some combination of all three. It took my primary care physician calling him and “consulting” with him to get him to move ahead at all, and then only reluctantly. It took six months from when I started having symptoms to get the needed surgical intervention.

I remember the post-surgical follow-up appointment when I told my surgeon that I was still having pain down my legs and his reply of, “That’s not possible.” My first reaction was to question myself. Then I looked at him, really looked at him, and thought how wrong he had already been. More dismissal of a patient’s pain and suffering, and possibly some heavy duty butt covering…

I understand that he had to do a lot of cutting and tugging to get that thing out of there. It’s impossible to know how much damage was pre-existing and how much was an inevitable result of having to pry the fibroid out. He didn’t need to be concerned. I’m not the sue-happy type.

What still amazes me, though, after seeing how many searches for “fibroid pain down leg,” and “femoral nerve damage from fibroids,” and the like come across this blog (The Fibroid From Hell is consistently my top post for the month), that he didn’t have a clue before he actually got in there. His initial advice to come back in three months if I was still having problems was just plain irresponsible.

I went back to my primary doctor, who said, “Nonsense!” to the surgeon’s assessment, and promptly wrote me a prescription and authorized several months of physical therapy. Bless her heart. The PT and the prescription did help, some. And my main doctor was also the one who gave me the straight talk about my future in emergency services work, when that was the last thing I wanted to hear.

All of this to get to two things:

Some Advice
Gals, if you have fibroids be sure to follow up. Don’t soldier on and be so patient about pain like I was. Don’t put it off, or be put off. A few months either way could make a huge difference in your future health. Nerve compression like that does not get better on it’s own. The only remedy is surgery. The longer the compression continues, the more chance of permanent damage.

The Future
Which brings me to the second thing. I don’t know if I’ll ever completely recover from this. I will keep working at it and I will overcome everything I possibly can. I’ve just had to admit today that, while my first impulse is to try and push through it and continue my exercise program as planned, I may never be able to do all the things I want to do physically. I intend to prove this wrong, but I do have to admit to the possibility of failure in order to plan how to overcome this, one way or the other.

My course of choice has always been to DO SOMETHING. Just like today. And what do I want to do? Go hike the hill where I heard the coyotes last night, get on my mountain bike, work on my flamenco Tangos, of course. But if I do that, I’ll just keep this flare up going and set myself back. Damn. The smart move is to SIT here. Deal with my frustration. And plot my comeback.

The objective remains the same, and I’m not so sure that the strategy itself is bad. The tactics definitely have to change, though. At the moment, given how everything gets reattached after a hysterectomy, I can’t even do isometric ab work. Even that pulls on the ligaments that slide past those unhappy nerves. Core exercises and leg exercises are out of the question until this calms down. I can do my arm workout. I can study my flamenco videos, plan a Grand Canyon hike for someday, look forward to my paddle trip.

In the meantime, here I sit, wondering if this is my metaphorical Elba and if I have set myself up for a personal Waterloo with my “FF2FF” program. I don’t think so. If I handle this well, it may only be a small setback.

So, it’s back to my other activities of the day. I’m making tamales to take with me down to Phoenix tomorrow when I go to see F1 and F2. I’ll sit in a chair, rather than stand while I do the filling and wrapping. The drive down with the manual transmission will make me a bit more sore, but an anti-inflammatory or two will get me through that. It’s been a couple months since I’ve seen my friends, and I miss them. I also need to get out of here for a few days just on principle.

Perseverance, I have. It’s patience that I need to develop.