To quote the $Turgeon

The friendly neuro$$$urgeon checks my date of birth three times in the one consultation. "You were doing ... what was it, again?" It appears that scaling cliffs, hanging from ropes a few hundred meters above terra ferma, and doing daily pull-ups from a hang board in the hallway, are not a repertoire he is familiar with in 51 year old women with a back injury. Moreover, few of his patients cycle 17kms to his rooms ... for my part I'm grateful to be one of the oddities.

A handsome sTurgeon...

The diagnosis is one severely herniated disc in my lumbar spine, two bulging discs on either side of it, and some worn out facet joints in the lumbar spine to boot.

The verdict is that I'm either too damaged or not damaged enough for any of the surgical interventions the sTurgeon can offer me at this time. I'm in a kind of medical limbo that relies on Mother Nature to take centre stage and define the new boundaries of my antics. The sTurgeon's knife will be there to catch me when my existence gravitates sufficiently close to those boundaries - which it will, in time, he says - but for now it's a matter of living within my new limits. And the task at hand is figuring out what those invisible limits are without overstepping them so much as to cause further grief to my anatomy.

I'm thinking it would be handy if a neat little buzzer went off to tell me when I'm overstepping the mark.

Blues not Blueys

He'd rather be climbing...

It's Easter. We're not in the Blueys. Climber Boy isn't very thrilled about this at all, but is good-natured enough to not be immensely grouchy. Partly, I'd say, that's because the weather up in the Blueys has been pretty horrible all weekend anyhow. Some of his climber friends have ventured up there all the same, and we may hear of their (mis)adventures on the slippery wet sandstone at some later date.

I'm told that sandstone remains grippy enough even when it's damp. Picking my way up a gnarly old route with rain beating down on my dial wouldn't be my idea of fun no matter what the state of rock.

For my part, the nerve pain is practically all gone, my right leg is regaining its strength, and I've started pushing the envelope a bit on my cycling trips. Yesterday I swapped the Townie cruiser for the 26" Tourer, which is not quite as laid out as the old classic 700C Tourer that I customarily ride but at least not as girlie-upright and sedately snail-paced as the humble Townie. Letting the tyre pressure right down seems to give me just enough cushioning to avoid jarring my back, and so my cruising speed and roaming distance have at least doubled. Which is a mighty good thing.