Lost Count

Knee Injections

How many injections did I have in each knee?  Even counting the little magic marker dots on my legs, I lost count somewhere around 38-40.  

Don't be too impressed. The injections are pretty superficial and all I feel is a tiny pinprick when the needle goes in. Either I am rather oblivious to discomfort, or they really don't hurt much. 

So, what's all this for?  Neural therapy.

Found this on a website that explains it pretty well:

"Neural Prolotherapy is an injection therapy with 5% dextrose (sugar) that focuses on treating the nerves in the skin that have become injured and entrapped due to inflammation.   Although the nerves are superficial, the pain they create is often felt in the deeper tissues.  The injection of low-dose dextrose changes the pain signaling and stops neurogenic inflammation (what your doctor may have called neuropathic pain).  The dextrose solution also has a regenerative effect on the entrapped nerves helping them to heal and preventing recurrence." http://www.drberghamer.com/neural-prolotherapy/

The fascinating thing is that there is immediate pain relief from the initial injections. Hopefully, each time I am treated it will last longer until the pain is gone altogether. 

While my knee replacements have fixed the instability problems in my joints and overall made things much better, I have still had both soreness and pain in the surrounding muscles, particularly in my right leg. that have made some things difficult. I cannot pull myself up the pool ladder with my right leg, for instance. And going up stairs is a bit slower than I'd like. I can't really run, either. Not that I want to run, but it would be nice to be able to jog out to the barn on a rainy day to get my chores done. 

Speaking of rain, the East Coast is under watch for a Nor'easter. This is a typical winter kind of storm that comes in from the ocean. The wind circulates as it does in a hurricane or cyclone and blows in from the north east, bringing both colder air and lots of precipitation from the ocean.  I don't think this one is expected to be too powerful, so hopefully the shore areas devastated by Hurricane Sandy will be just fine.  There is likely to be a lot of rain, though through the next several days. 

Times like this I am glad I have plenty of shelter for the Boys. They have the run-in roofs on both sides of the barn--east and west--access to their box stalls, and the run in shed in the arena area. 

Still I will probably find them standing out in the rain, heads down, backs to the wind, looking quite drippy and miserable. 

Nothing like horse sense.