Not that anyone is asking

Teacher Terry said:
I’m really sorry, Frank. I totally understand trying to rescue your dog. Besides my kids, my dogs are the most important thing in my life.
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Yeah, he wouldn't have paused to even think about it. They've been buddies for over 14 years, and it's just been the 2 of them for the past 3. To be honest, I hope K'mere is gone, too. Then, if there's an afterlife, they still have each other. That dog wouldn't know what to do without his dad.
 
Murrmurr said:
Grant's body was found at about 9:00 last night. The neighbor with the boat took it out for a second go-around on the pond near their mobile home park. He spotted Grant sort of draped over a thick clump of branches and debris not very far out from the shore. No sign of his dog, yet.

The neighbor said he doesn't think Grant drowned because his face was not in the water and "he didn't look like a drowned person." People are saying he probably jumped in after the dog, got exhausted, then had trouble breathing and maybe had a heart attack while he hung onto those branches. The boat guy told police that's what he thinks happened, and everybody's running with it.

The dog is a 14 or 15 yr-old border collie, and he's chipped, so Grant's son said that if someone found him and took him to a vet clinic, police would have been notified. Not sure about that. I think they would've just tried calling my brother.

Police said the coroner will do an autopsy on Monday morning and if the cause of death wasn't drowning, then rescue divers might go in and look for the dog...for confirmation, I guess. (And I don't know why they call that body of water a pond. It's a small lake, and it's really deep in some spots.)

If the dog fell in, Grant would have gone after him, no question. The dog was one of 2 that Grant owned that were from the same litter, and they looked identical, so he named them K'mere and C'mon. C'mon died about 3 years ago, and Grant was devastated. He'd lost his chow, Misha, only months earlier. She was pretty old, too, and he bought all of them when they were just puppies. So, yeah, Grant definitely would have dived in after K'mere if he fell in...the dog was old and stiff and didn't have a lot of energy. Same could be said about Grant, though.

I'm pretty torn up. Grant was my favorite brother. He was a super intelligent guy and I really looked up to him. The one bright spot is that he loved hanging out at that place, fishing, boating, taking his dogs on the trails all around it. He used to camp there quite a lot when the weather was decent...and he was healthier.
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Sorry about the loss of your brother, @Murrmurr! It's not easy losing a beloved family member. May he Rest In Peace.
 
I came across this really short video of a kid (probly 20-something) who walks exactly like I have been for the past several months.


He said he broke his back, which is how my back problems started. I've had a few surgeries over the years since, and a lot of therapy, and I've been out of a wheelchair way more than in one... until recently.

Anyway, see how his legs and feet tremble and wobble and twitch? That's what mine do, even when I'm not walking. It'll happen when I'm just sitting, and sometimes it happens while I'm sleeping. And it's really painful.

It's not constant...well, my calf muscles do this subtle twitching non-stop; you usually can't see it, but I can feel it. The trembling is not constant. That comes and goes. I can walk pretty okay for a few hours almost everyday. That's a total of a few hours, like for 15 to 30 minutes here and there, and some days I'll walk just fine for over an hour, even a couple of hours.

I think that happens when my spine is better aligned because I sat or laid down in just the right way for a while. I think that because there are other times when I've sat or laid down totally the wrong way, apparently, and my spine got totally out of alignment, and sometimes when that happens, I can't walk at all for a while. My legs will either go completely numb, or become so weak they can't support any weight. And I can feel when that happens....feel it in my spine, I mean. I can actually feel a vertebra slip a little, or kind of click, and there's horrible pain and my legs feel like they're on fire, and that'll last for 15-20 minutes. I hate when that happens.

And sometimes I'll be walking around okay, and my foot (or both feet) will very suddenly go into a stiff, rigid point, like a ballet point, and spring me up into the air. It's really weird. I can usually grab onto something so I don't fall, but I often fall if I'm outside....not many solid things to grab onto out there besides the orange tree.

I just thought it was interesting that this kid walks just like I do. And also that it started after he fractured his spine.
 
Frank, I wish there was some answer in the near future for you. Living with pain with limited amounts of good minutes/hours is overwhelming. I’m glad you’re in your house now and have a yard and orange tree to enjoy.
 
Jules said:
Frank, I wish there was some answer in the near future for you. Living with pain with limited amounts of good minutes/hours is overwhelming. I’m glad you’re in your house now and have a yard and orange tree to enjoy.
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I have an appointment with my back surgeon on Tuesday, the 5th. He wants to do another surgery. I was going to get an epidural instead, but then I read my image results. Clearly, injections aren't going to help at all, so I'm going for the surgery.

And, yes! I love having a yard.
 
Murrmurr said:
I came across this really short video of a kid (probly 20-something) who walks exactly like I have been for the past several months.


He said he broke his back, which is how my back problems started. I've had a few surgeries over the years since, and a lot of therapy, and I've been out of a wheelchair way more than in one... until recently.

Anyway, see how his legs and feet tremble and wobble and twitch? That's what mine do, even when I'm not walking. It'll happen when I'm just sitting, and sometimes it happens while I'm sleeping. And it's really painful.

It's not constant...well, my calf muscles do this subtle twitching non-stop; you usually can't see it, but I can feel it. The trembling is not constant. That comes and goes. I can walk pretty okay for a few hours almost everyday. That's a total of a few hours, like for 15 to 30 minutes here and there, and some days I'll walk just fine for over an hour, even a couple of hours.

I think that happens when my spine is better aligned because I sat or laid down in just the right way for a while. I think that because there are other times when I've sat or laid down totally the wrong way, apparently, and my spine got totally out of alignment, and sometimes when that happens, I can't walk at all for a while. My legs will either go completely numb, or become so weak they can't support any weight. And I can feel when that happens....feel it in my spine, I mean. I can actually feel a vertebra slip a little, or kind of click, and there's horrible pain and my legs feel like they're on fire, and that'll last for 15-20 minutes. I hate when that happens.

And sometimes I'll be walking around okay, and my foot (or both feet) will very suddenly go into a stiff, rigid point, like a ballet point, and spring me up into the air. It's really weird. I can usually grab onto something so I don't fall, but I often fall if I'm outside....not many solid things to grab onto out there besides the orange tree.

I just thought it was interesting that this kid walks just like I do. And also that it started after he fractured his spine.
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That was beautiful, Murrmurr. I hope the medical-gadgets people are paying attention!
 
hollydolly said:
((frank)))..I've just seen this, I;m just so sorry this has happened to your brother, coming so soon after the Death of your sister..

Honestly with your ever struggling health and pain, and all this tragedy and pain in your heart.. it's a wonder you can even think straight...
:cry:
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My grampa's favorite saying, and he said it a lot, was "Laughter is the best medicine."

I don't have much to laugh about these days, but I still like making other people laugh, and that feels pretty much the same. It is good medicine.

Grant's coroner's report says he didn't drown....no water in his lungs, or even the bronchi and very little in his esophagus. So the cause of death is cardiopulmonary disease, manner of death is exhaustion. The investigators theorize the dog fell in the lake, Grant went in to rescue the dog, and then he was too weak to get himself out of the lake.

They still haven't found his dog, but officials only searched for a couple/few hours after they found Grant, and his son's only been back out there a couple of times. The dog was really old. I think he went with his master, you know? Probly went and laid under some shrubs and undergrowth and passed away.. I'm sure he was exhausted, too.
 
hearlady said:
@Murrmurr sharing that video is a good idea for letting us picture what you are going through. I wish you so much luck with your surgery even though it will also take skill from that surgeon and faith from you. Any relief I'm sure is welcome. 🙏
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My back surgeon is exceptionally skilled. He's kind of famous, at least in the US, and he invented an implant and improved various bits of hardware for correcting spine deformities. As skilled as he is, all spine specialists are limited to what is known, right? There's a whole bunch that isn't known, especially about spinal nerves and specific causes of bone degeneration.

But we'll get there someday. (y)
 
So I just got back from seeing my back surgeon and it's all good news.

He said the surgery he wants to do will solve the walking issues. The latest images clearly show the exact problem. He said it couldn't be more clear, and not only will he not have to implant another rod, he won't even have to open me up!

He'll poke a hole in both sides of my torso at the L3 level, where one end of the vertebra immediately above there has collapsed, then stick a hollow rod into one hole and out the other, and, as he put it, "jack up that baby up and secure it into place." This will be about a 3hr surgery, instead of 4 to 6 hrs if it was open, which is awesome as hell.

More good news is that the bone is super dense. He was really excited about that; "Practically like marble," he said. "You rarely see bone that solid in people your age." (maybe because I grew up on a dairy farm)
But we'll still do a density study, if for no other reason than to record it.

Surgery will be in 4 or 5 months...he's all booked up til then. Meanwhile, he told me keep walking as much as I can every day, and do these leg exercises he gave me, to limit muscle loss. He gave me the usual speech about how surgery is never a guarantee, and there are risks, and all that. But then he leaned toward me, and said, "You're gonna land on your feet running, Frank. No question."

I'm super stoked.
 
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