God wants me tatoo'd

Just walking along minding my own business, doing some gym exercises too soon after recovery from shoulder strain and BLAM! ... I'm shot in the arm, or at least it feels like it. Burning pain in my shoulder, the feeling of red-hot dowels being shoved down the length of my right arm, my head bent over in forced navel-contemplation.

Anyone who knows me knows that my exercise regime can be charitably described as "mild". I think the ultimate cause must either have been the bicycle accident I had a year and a half ago wherein I was forced to slam on my brakes at full flat terrain speed and managed to fly over my bicycle and land on my arms, which thereafter hurt for a couple of weeks. Or, it might have been an earlier trip to Hawaii where I slipped climbing down a rock embankment, flipped around backwards and my arms were pulled backwards at an unpleasant angle over the edge of the rockface.

My neurologist says I have a herniated disk at C5 (I think) and that surgery, such as a laminectomy, is required.

He then suggests a surgeon he knows who I later find out is no longer taking patients. I make an appointment to see (just see, no cutty cut yet) two months out in October. I'm now waiting three days for a callback from colleagues of the first surgeon. They don't make it easy, do they?

My heart is out to all that have no insurance. How could you possibly get by? If my party has something to say about it, you will.