I apologize!

. . . For yesterday’s post. I can’t believe I wrote that just 24 hours ago. But of course I’ve now been back on my meds longer and my mind is much clearer.

I mean, all that stuff about my abduction and interrogation! Ha, ha! Let me tell you what REALLY happened.

If you’ll refer back to a PRIOR post (before the one about the Hateful, Discriminatory Nazi Porn King) you’ll see that I was having a problem with sciatica. Now I’ve had bouts with lower back pain before, but never with numbness and tingling all the way down to my foot. That scared me a bit, so I overcame my macho denial proclivity and went to see a family doctor.

His diagnosis: herniated disc L5-S1 pinching the right sciatic nerve. He referred me to a neurologist.

Neurologist’s diagnosis: herniated disc L5-S1 pinching the right sciatic nerve. He ordered an MRI to see the extent of the bulging disc.

The other tests the neurologist ran became, in my deranged mind, some of the interrogation techniques I mentioned yesterday. The doc wanted to see if there was any nerve damage or reduction of conductivity of brain signals, so he pounded on my knees and Achilles tendons to check reflexes. Then he attached small contacts to my lower leg and ankles and sent electrical impulses from other parts of my legs to measure the speed of travel of the impulse and the amount of current transmitted.

I called this test the “cattle prod” test. The doc and his assistant would tell me, “This will make your foot twitch,” and then zap me! Yeah, it “twitched” all right! I dang near kicked the assistant in her pretty mouth!

The worst part was when they hit me with a charge from under the soft, back side of the knee. She had to push the contacts in hard (and THEY were NOT soft!) and then ZAP! My whole leg jerked. I was ready to answer any question they asked me at that point if they’d promise to stop!

The final test involved inserting very thin needles into three different muscles and then having me flex those muscles. Actually, that wasn’t too painful until the following day when those muscles ached around the insertion point.

And after all that came the MRI. This was one of the “unspeakable acts” I mentioned yesterday. They put me into an “upright” MRI device, which meant I was able to sit instead of lying down. You’d think that would be more pleasant, right? But sitting is the one position that causes my leg to ache. Plus, the walls of the machine pressed in on my shoulders and arms, and they were hot! I was stuck in that thing for 45 minutes.

The results showed clearly, to everyone’s surprise, absolutely NO bulging discs! Evidently the “pinch” felt by the sciatic nerve is from arthritis in the lower spine, not a herniated disc.

And really, that’s good news. It means I’m likely NOT a candidate for surgery, and that twisting and turning is NOT likely to cause any further damage or injury.

So, after all of that whining and complaining, I’m not nearly as “bad off” as I had feared. Sometimes my macho denial proclivity isn’t off the mark!

The explanation offered here is what Carol tells me really happened over the last two weeks. She insists that I’ve been going to work every day, and that our lives have been pretty normal. The van with the dark windows is no longer parked in front of my home, so I guess she’s right. The memories (or was it a dream?) about the interrogation are fading.

But it still seems that I remember someone talking to me at length about the “conspiracy” thing and calling my description of it “paranormal.”

(Or was that “paranoia?”)

Hmmmm.