Christmas day chez Wade was very enjoyable, with hardly any pain at all. I then overdid it with my longest post-op walk yet, a full hour in the fresh air. I fell asleep for two hours immediately afterwards but it was good to extend my range, which, for the past 10 days, has seen me perambulate no further than down to the shop and back. Indeed, stagnation is one by-product of discectomy which is starting to get me. I can't go anywhere in a car yet because my neck is too fragile and my world has become Mousehole. Now don't get me wrong, Mousehole is a lovely if surf-bereft place, but it'd be good to see a bit more of the world again. Perhaps I'll walk to Newlyn today.
As for my health, I fancy the Lyme rash has all but left one side of my face and that it's marginally lighter on the other. The kick-in-the-balls pain that Lyme brought three weeks ago seems to have gone. Maybe Lyme is on the way out? Who knows but I'm not arguing with at least some of its symptoms vanishing.
Onto the more pressing matter of recovery from cervical discectomy and fusion, neurological uncertainty continues to bedevil my left leg but I keep telling myself this is a consequence of the post-op swelling and that when this goes all will be well (or, at least, heading in the right direction). The neck pain returned with intensity yesterday and is pretty bad this morning but one thing which ameliorates it is the story of Mark Price, with whom I'm now in touch. Mark hails from California and now lives in Tamarindo, Costa Rica (a mile or two from where the Wades stayed back in April). Mark is a lifelong surfer who shreds but had very similar problems with his neck, at the C4/5 vertebrae, to those which have afflicted me. But, post-cervical discectomy, he's back in the water and charging. He's pictured here on a hefty drop, which he made.
It's curious that the one person I've discovered who's had a cervical discectomy and returned to surfing lives a couple of miles from the last place I visited on an overseas surf trip. In truth, I had something of an average time of it in Costa Rica (though my lad Harry, pictured by Matos Films, loved the place), and looking back on it I now realise that what I thought was pain caused by repeated skate-induced dislocations of my right shoulder was actually the beginning the slide to myelopathy. However, despite feeling strangely out of sorts I had a few lovely waves, including one right-hander at the rivermouth break (between Tamarindo and Playa Grande) that was the stuff of dreams (mine, anyway).
Anyway, maybe it's a sign. I've been secretly promising myself some warm water surfing once I'm through all this - maybe Costa Rica is calling again?
Mark is a true believer in Tamarindo and surfing. He runs a real estate office called Sol Realty and really looks after his customers.
www.tamarindorealestate.org
Posted by: Surfsponger | June 18, 2010 at 05:20 AM