My daughter was over and she and her mother were chatting in the living room. I decided to join them and as I crossed the room, it hit me. PD cramp down the side of my right leg, below the knee. I fell into the sofa and waited for it to go away. It took some time to do so.
Someone once said there is a thin line between laughter and pain. I bet they never suffered a PD cramp. The pain is a long way from laughter. It feels like someone has smacked you with a baseball bat and it is unrelenting. You try to massage it, without success. It just goes deeper into your leg. I have found the only way to defeat it is to stand up and stay in that position until it dissipates. Finally, relief, albeit relative relief. My leg still hurts somewhat 20 hours later. You never learn to curse until you have a PD cramp.
My daughter tells me she gets the same cramps and pain. Her physiotherapist told her that the cause of pain on the side of the leg (as opposed to the back of the leg) is neurological. In her case, it is the result of nerve damage after a couple of operations to repair a disc in her spine. Mine is because my brain is refusing to do its job!
It was with some trepidation that I took my usual long walk at 5 in the morning. Afterall, I could be a mile from home and if a PD cramp hit me then, I would have a problem. The solution I came up with was to take my cell phone, hoping my wife would hear the house phone ring. It never came to that. The walk went without incident except I saw a gang of racoons in a back lane. We live in a suburban neighbourhood (far from being rural) and have had the occassional racoon come up from the river, but nothing like this. There must have been 8 of them walking up the back lane in a group. Kind of following the leader into someone's backyard. I didn't stop, afraid that I would be no match for that many racoons. As I said, the walk was without incident, feeling good to be alive.
No comments:
Post a Comment