What I am Grateful For When I Cannot Walk

An unknown injury, bed rest, pain, and gratitude

Half of my left leg is numb. That happened today. Or was it last night? I am grateful for the numbness and weakness in my left leg because it is not the searing, liquid-glass pain of Saturday and Sunday, which cascaded from my glutes to my calves in waves. That pain made it almost impossible for me to walk. If I walked, I cried.

On Saturday, when I woke up with the pain, I did the human thing, which is to follow the pain to its source. What caused the pain? I traced back two days, to my rheumatologist visit. A new rheumatologist who, unlike my other one, expressed curiosity about how much pain was centered in my hips, pelvis, and lower back. We need to order an MRI, but we cannot order an MRI without doing an x-ray first.

My x-ray was clean. Healthy hips. I am grateful for that. Now, I wait on my insurance to approve my MRI. I will call them tomorrow. The next day I will finally go to the doctor, where maybe we can figure out what’s going on, or I can get a referral to a specialist.

I…