I had a trip to the doctor’s yesterday and it wasn’t very good.
I have said more than once that I have several issues with my feet. Yesterday I went to a New Doctor’s office to have some test run, specifically an EMG. EMG stands for Electromyography the test involves receiving several small electric shock to your muscles. They even you use small needles in the test as well. It is more uncomfortable than painful. An EMG is a diagnostic procedure to assess the health of muscles and the nerve cells that control them (motor neurons). Special thanks to the Mayo Clinic.
The test showed that there were definite problems with my feet and legs and what those problems may be, but not the cause and so there were really no answers. The test can show the cause, but not with me. This was not encouraging at all.
The doctor did uncover some definite issues. My feet have the same tremors that my hands do. On my left foot, when the electricity ran through the nerves my big toe would react. On my right foot nothing happened at all. The rest of the test results appeared on a graph sheet which I did not see and couldn’t have interpreted if I had. The end result was still no answers.
There were a lot of guesses. Maybe it’s my vascular system, but it is more likely to be a neurological problem. It was my neurologist that sent me for the test. I didn’t find this encouraging. The worst part was that it was time for more testing, at another hospital with another doctor using different machines. The depression which had come back proceeded to get worse.
It is extremely hard to hold on to hope with stuff like this, so much of my health issues seem to be unsolvable. The anti-depressants don’t really work. The anti-tremor medication works until I get a little nervous and then just stops. At church on Sunday I was in a kneeling position with my head bowed and my jaw started to shake like there was an earth quake in my mouth. But no one knows why. This is more of a report than anything else but I don’t want to leave you with all bad stuff so let me close with these words from Samwise to Frodo in The Lord of the Rings.
“I know. It’s all wrong. By rights we shouldn’t even be here. But we are. It’s like in the great stories, Mr. Frodo. The ones that really mattered. Full of darkness and danger they were. And sometimes you didn’t want to know the end. Because how could the end be happy? How could the world go back to the way it was when so much bad had happened?
But in the end, it’s only a passing thing, this shadow. Even darkness must pass. A new day will come. And when the sun shines it will shine out the clearer. Those were the stories that stayed with you. That meant something. Even if you were too small to understand why. But I think, Mr. Frodo, I do understand. I know now. Folk in those stories had lots of chances of turning back only they didn’t. Because they were holding on to something.”
