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<\/p>\nTo say the least.<\/p>\n
Recenty I almost promised to post more Cedar Waxwing photos to Feathered Photography “in the next few days” and here it is eight days later and nada. The reasons for the delay are mostly medical and that’s something I really don’t like to talk about on my blog. But at some point I realize that my loyal readers deserve to know at least the basics of what’s going on. We’re now at that point, and beyond.<\/p>\n
A few months ago, after three major back surgeries in the last five years, my back started going south on me again, progressively. Knowing the likely outcome, I’ve tried to endure it for as long as I can by reducing my back and leg-aggravating activities (including long birding trips) as much as possible.<\/p>\n
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Lumbar steroid injection<\/em><\/p>\n As a potential stopgap measure to delay the likely inevitability of additional surgery, yesterday I had two steroid injections in my spine. One injection was at the top of my lumbar region and the other where the bottom lumbar vertebrae joins with my sacrum – basically at the upper and lower borders of my earlier spinal fusion.<\/p>\n I’ve had lumbar steroid injections before and they haven’t helped much, and even at best they’re temporary, but if possible I’d like to delay the likely inevitability of additional surgery at least until spring\/early summer birding and garden-planting activities are over. We’ll see how that goes…<\/p>\n <\/p>\n To complicate matters, I’ve known for about five years that I have an infrarenal abdominal aortic aneurism (AAA) that I’ve been keeping a close eye on. AAA’s typically grow about 10% per year and a recent scans and visit with my vascular surgeon revealed that it’s getting to the size where it will have to be repaired at some point in the fairly near future – her prediction is in 2-3 years but it could vary. I’ll admit it, a growing aortic aneurism makes me nervous. It makes me think of tire blowouts, so I take my blood pressure medication religiously.<\/p>\n So there you have it. I’m not publishing this post to whine in public or for sympathy. I just figure my readers deserve to know why the timing of my posts has been so sporadic and unpredictable lately. Every day I think of my dad’s mantra when he was feeling the pains and going through the medical scares and major inconveniences of old age. He would often say “It beats the hell out of the alternative”.<\/p>\n Dad was right. In the future I’ll try to keep posts like this to an absolute minimum. I’ll also try to post those Cedar Waxwing photos “soon”.<\/p>\n Ron<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To say the least.<\/p>\n