the Cindy Coaster

Cindy in the front seat of a small plane flying us to the Masa Mara in Kenya.

The roller coaster has been real the last couple of days and it’s been hard to get our hands on the situation.

Sun Night-Monday Morning was not great. Lots of pain, lots of sleep interruption.

Cindy got up on Monday at 4:30 AM I got up at 6:00 AM and tried to help by massaging her ankle (the pain sinks to that spot and she can’t reach it).

We have finally figured out that one of the muscle relaxers she is taking helps the best and after she takes it she frequently enters a low pain high sleep zone.

Later in the morning, she asked through the pain, “What is my goal?”

That was a triggering question. Right now we are just tying to survive, but that is not a good plan.

Slowly through the day we have come up with 2 daily goals:

Cindy gets 10 hours of sleep. This seems to be the #1 thing right now. While she is asleep she is not hurting and her body can give most of its energy to healing.

Cindy walks around the block in our neighborhood 3x a day (2,397.22 ft - about half a mile each time). To get the excess blood and swelling out of her body, we need her to move.

We have readjusted her meds and are following a better evening distribution to help accomplish the sleeping.

The other thing we decided was to learn more about Piriformis Syndrome. We read several different medical sites and then we watched over an hour of teaching videos. Of course, we know to evaluate the sources and try to weigh the different information. Lots of doctors have shared information and they agree about most things. So that feels good. It helped us get a sense of what we might do to help the healing process.

On Monday night we got ready for bed early as Cindy was tired and worn out.

She fell asleep at 9:30 AM and got out of bed at 9 AM. During the middle of the night she was awake at 4 AM for about an hour.

It was the best night of sleep in about a week.

Today, Tuesday, we have had a good day. We met the walking goal twice, but the rain interrupted the 3rd lap.

The pain has been manageable. On a few occasions, it has hit about 7, but mostly 5 or below. Twice during the day, Cindy thought that it was at 0.

We have tried not to celebrate, not sure what it means, but thankful for the fleeting mercy.

I’ve been watching this Tulip Tree. I’m worried about it. I think it has overestimated the spring.

Another tree in the neighborhood. It’s really confused.

In an unwatched moment I took this of Cindy. The pain was about 6 at this moment, but she was walking through the pain.

Flowers, notes and prayers have been so encouraging.

The pink has begun to appear and the freeze is coming tonight.

Another one even more opened.

This is the furthest she has been away from us, the dogs got distracted and she kept walking. The pain was about 2.