The Fortune

The visit to the neurosurgeon yesterday has had me thinking.   Am I glad I don't need surgery or am I upset that I don't need surgery?   It would be nice to think something was wrong and with a surgery, things could be fixed straight away.   Say, like appendicitis.   Take it out and all is fine.   Or torn meniscus: trim off the torn bit and you're back in business.   Or even a baby: remove the offending kicking, crying entity and all will be better...that is at least with the innards of your body.   You've got do deal with that one for the rest of your life.

But there was not real fix.   There wasn't anything that would have absolutely, positively guaranteed improvement (or less discomfort) without the risk that things would get worse in other areas.  I did some summary in my post yesterday, but the overall evaluation the surgeon gave me was that it wasn't the best course to do anything now.   That dealing with what I had was possibly better than doing something and potentially making things less-tolerable or worse in other areas.

And that's frustrating.   It's frustrating because I'm sitting here with my neck hurting from the single act of holding my head in a certain position for forty-five seconds so my dentist could glue a temporary crown in.    That was some time ago and it's still hurting.   It's annoying because my arm is tingling most of the time now and the itching is, well, annoying.   It's worrisome because I know there is pressure on nerves and there may be permanent damage.    And I have degeneration in one of the vertebra that makes things painful or uncomfortable.  

Yeah, I know, that was some good whining there, wasn't it  I want to be happy I don't need surgery.   I've been trying to avoid surgery for eight years now and when I finally had mentally worked myself into what I thought was the inevitable, based on the evaluation by one doctor and another radiologist, hearing it was better to do nothing than something has spun me around.

Or at least it did until dinner tonight.   We went to a new restaurant tonight and at the end we all got fortune cookies.   I am far more interested in the cookie than I am the fortune, but tonight I thought the fortune was just what I needed to hear:  "it could be better, but it's good enough."

The Big Boy Update:  My son was telling me one of his stories.   He likes to make up stories.   He told me there was this one "guy" (who was clearly a super hero) named Chainer.   He told me, "Chainer has chains that come out of him and he wears dragon boots."    "Sounds fierce," I told him.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  We were having a puppet show tonight.   We'd take turns getting hand puppets, going behind the sofa and holding them up over the back to do a show.   My son and daughter were going to do a show together and were working on who was going to be which puppet.   My son was suggesting my daughter be the elephant, even though she already had selected her puppets.   She said to him, "I don't have any more hands.   I only have three hands."