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Living with PN, do you find yourself retreating from life?
Neuropathy | Last Active: Mar 5 10:44am | Replies (144)Comment receiving replies
@ray666 Good morning Ray, I too have better days and then an off day. I feel like my off days are when I didn't sleep as well or when I have over done at work. Most people see me pushing my tool cart around and then they looked shocked when they see me walking with a cane. They have seen me for years and then ask, what happened to you when they see the cane. I show them my buried cane on my tool cart and explain that my tool cart does not do stairs to the roof tops. Many are those stairs a challenge for me, as I try to take everything I might need to work with, but there is always the job where I make repeated trips up and down for parts or unexpected problems. On those days that one job is all I can handle as I fatigue with multiple trips and the my left leg muscles contract, my leg jumps up and therefore I use the cane for balance because I cannot control my leg sometimes. That has more to do with my drop foot I think. I just don't let any of it stop me, yes it slows me down and days when I set more doing work orders allows my body to recoup from the hard days. For me sitting too long is not a good thing either. Being winter my calfs get cold, so I bought these knee braces and wear them around my calfs, a size smaller works. They are made in Korea with materials that warm your skin. Really helps as cold muscles get tight and that affects my walking. I don't know if others with p/n have same issues or not.
Replies to "@ray666 Good morning Ray, I too have better days and then an off day. I feel..."
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Good morning @lockmith
Like you, my off days seem tied to those days when I've not had a good sleep the night before. Today, for example, is one of those days: I had an interrupted sleep last night (had to get up and read for a half hour), and this morning––at least thus far––I'm feeling sluggish, not at my best. When I've had a good night's sleep, my mornings generally go well. That's why I believe I'm dealing with a cause & effect situation.
My friends, too, seemed a bit surprised when seeing me using a cane for the first time. These are friends who've, for the most part, known me for years, a daily runner who, on weekends, clicked off 10Ks, and, wherever there was one, would run a marathon. So some of those long-time friends look puzzled: "What's with the cane, Ray?" And most recently, I've encountered a few obstacles where even cane-totting was challenging. Just wait'll the same long-time friends see me gripping a walker. 🙂
Oddly enough, I find stairs––so long as there's a good sturdy banister––not especially challenging. It's "flats" that I can find challenging, even old sidewalks where the pavement squares are up, down, up, down, like some poorly carved jigsaw puzzle where the individual tiles down quite fit. Now stairs where there's no banister? That's a different story. I've stopped going to certain theaters and concert halls where the thickly-carpeted stairs are wide and banister-less. Unless I've someone to cling to, I steer clear of such places.
I had a case of drop foot many years ago. It cleared up––or I think it did. I sometimes wonder if the drop foot was a precursor of today’s PN.
Ah, sitting too long! That's a biggie for me. I've had to alert certain friends who'll drop by for some coffee and an hour's chat that they needn't think I'm losing interest in their company of every 10 or 15 minutes I stand and wander about for a few minutes. For me, prolonged sitting doesn't make me cold (well, sometimes it does); it's knees: they tend to forget what knees are supposed to do. If I sit too long (more than a quarter hour), when I stand, my knees will be oblivious to what I'm counting on them to do and my legs will feel like warmed-up silly putty.
Here's to you having a good weekend!
Ray