In recent years I have suffered mildly from a scratchy throat, and a feeling of recurring glumpiness that comes with any attempt to swallow. This bit of health-related aggravation is known in medical circles as a “globus sensation,” and apparently there is nothing whatever to be done about it except to avoid certain foods and try not to get so stressed out about things.
One time I got so irritated with Mr. Globus that I scheduled a comprehensive exam of my esophagus. This involved drinking a barium concoction while a doctor observed my innards on an X-ray machine. Now, the doctor was nice, and he reassured me that there was no sign of the big C, but he didn’t have any solution to my dilemma other than what I mentioned above. However, while observing my annoyingly innocent swallowing mechanism, he said something in medicalese that translates something like this: “Holy cow! Look at your neck!”
“What’s wrong with my neck?” I asked.
“Your vertebrae are severely degraded!” he told me. “Aren’t you in terrible, terrible agony?”
“Why no,” I said. “I take a big dose of acetaminophen twice a day, and I hardly notice.”
“Hmmm,” he said. “I can’t think when I’ve seen a neck in such bad shape.”
“Oh,” I said, sharply envisioning an episode of internal decapitation and subsequent confinement to a wheelchair with a breathing tube attached. “So, what should I do?”
“Oh,” he replied breezily, “as long as it doesn’t hurt there’s nothing to worry about. I’m surprised that it doesn’t cause you terrible, terrible pain, though.”
Nothing to worry about? When you use the term “severely degraded” about the bones that protect my spinal cord, I get anxious, pain or no pain. Apparently, he was right, though, because several of his colleagues shared his reaction: amazement at my wretched condition, coupled with a gentle reassurance that there was no cause for undue concern. No fair, I think. Everybody else who has neck issues gets multiple surgeries, a fancy brace, and copious outpourings of sympathy, whereas I get, “well, you are indeed a hot mess, but just take your aspirin and you’ll be fine.”
I have a similar situation with my poor feeble hands. I have been instructed to wear special wrist braces at night, to stave off the effects of carpal tunnel syndrome. (Obligatory digression: I feel a slow burn when someone says proudly, “I have carpal tunnel!” It goes through my head to say crisply, “Yes! You have exactly two carpal tunnels, one in each wrist! What you are trying to say is that you have carpal tunnel syndrome, which is a thickening and narrowing of the carpal tunnel due to overuse, which in turn constricts and damages the nerves that run through it.” But nobody wants me to say that.)
Anyway, I have long known about the wrist braces designed to ease the symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome, but I only recently learned that these braces should be worn at night. Doing this really does help, even if it’s not a perfect solution. Nobody wants to operate on me for this, either, thus yielding me yet another missed opportunity for gaining sympathetic attention. Apparently, my hands aren’t going to fall off, and neither is my head.
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You should move down south. Everybody wants to operate down here. I’ve had surgery on both wrists (about a year apart) to relieve carpal tunnel syndrome. I did wear the braces at night on both wrists for a while. I also had cortisone shots twice in each wrist before resorting to surgery. The kicker in each case was the clicking thumb, where the joint locks up and then pops loose. After surgery seven or eight years ago things are much better. Now there is only arthritis to complain about.
In defense of the doctor regarding my carpal tunnels, he did say he would operate if things got worse. The part that really confuses me is the neck thing. How can the doctors be so shocked and so unconcerned at the same time? (Rhetorical question, of course).
Always good to know when a trouble is shared! The swallowing thing, I mean. As for necks, I’ve long been used to hearing my vertebrae rubbing against one another when I turn to look, as it were. In my case these things are interactions between old age and damp, because I live in NE UK and the principle cause of death here is lichen. Keep calm and carry on!
I think we live in similar climates, as I am in the rainforest of Southeast Alaska. A place where, in the words of Craig Ferguson, damp is a color. 😎