A tailbone update..

I’ve recently had a few questions in comments about the progress of my tailbone (or sacrum) pain and situation.. Its been a long while since I’ve posted an update, mainly because there hasn’t been much of a change. Rather than blabber on about what things I’ve tried, and the depression that comes along with this challenge.. I’ll post a short list and a summary.

The last update I had was around my visiting OHSU for an MRI and an investigation of whether or not I had piriformis syndrome, which turned out to be fruitless.. since then (in no particular order) I’ve;

1. Tried another round of several weeks of chiropractic.. which felt good/relaxing, but did not fix the problem. I get similar relief after a good deep massage, which I’m blessed to have by my wife who is a massage therapist! (who I’m both inspired by and really proud of!)

2. Tried to be more disciplined about exercising my abs and losing weight. I’ve had some success, and some set backs, but I do not see a direct correlation to the tailbone pain.

3. More consistent meditation.. I have found that the more I meditate on a regular basis, the better attitude and outlook on life that I can maintain. My goal is not to ignore or deny my pain, its to learn how to handle it better and to use it as a catalyst to improve my life overall.

The most recent setback I’ve had is what I would like to think might be related to the tailbone pain, but my doctor says it probably is not..

During this past Christmas vacation I was working on installing laminate flooring in our house. I woke up one morning with motivation and energy to get right to work and make some progress on the flooring. I was also baking a few loaves of sourdough bread for a get-together we were having at a friends place. I think my mistake was in that I didn’t give my body time to warm up or stretch out in the morning before I got too physical (bending here and there, getting up and down, putting the bread in the oven in a cast iron dutch oven, etc). Well, at some point as I was crouching down to put the bread into the oven I felt a little shift/pop in my lumbar area and a healthy dose of pain.. not good. Well, to make a long story short, I think I’ve done some damage to a vertebrae. My doctor put me on a burst dosage of steroids to knock down the inflammation and see if it heals, which it did not… And as I write this, I’m on the last 3 days of a tapered dose of steroids to see if it would take care of the inflammation and my back would heal itself..which doesn’t really seem to be working because I have been needing to supplement the steroids with pain killers to take the edge off of the pain. I feel as if I have a knot in my lower right hand side of my spine in the lumbar area, and when I bend forward to put my socks, shoes, underwear, pants (etc) on I get pain, or if I try to raise my right leg too high I feel pain. The pain happens in my back as I’ve described, as well as my abdomen in the lower right side, and in my testicles as if someone has kicked me in the groin.. (well, it would be a light kick in that example) I think the guys reading this could imagine what I’m talking about.. it really isn’t pleasant.

So, what’s next?

If these steroids don’t kick in and take care of the problem within the next 3 or 4 days, I’m supposed to call my doctor and he’ll refer me to have another MRI..this time of my lumbar area. From there, we’ll just have to “see what they find”. And the beat goes on…

Gallery software installed and running!

Over this holiday weekend (Happy MLK Day!) I installed and setup a nice piece of image gallery software called, quite simply, Gallery. I’m using a Wordpress plugin called WPG2 to manage and better integrate the pictures into the blog postings as well as a sidebar widget in Wordpress to display a random image from the gallery each time someone views the page..

You’ll notice on the top left of my page is a mini-navigation bar with orange icons.. I added a new one to go directly to the Gallery album of my Artwork.. I’ve taken pictures of the most recent finished pieces that I consider representative of my work and where I’ve been as well as where I’m heading with it. Some pieces I’m more happy with than others, and then there are some that I really dislike and don’t plan on posting here at all.. I’ll likely add some digital art as well, but this is mainly for oil or acrylic on canvas.

Here are a few new pieces I’ve finished:

Brew #34: Sorachi Ace Pale

Most folks don’t realize that we (read the world) is in the midst of a serious hop shortage.. this probably doesn’t affect the big guys like Annheiser-Busch, but it definitely causes problems for the smaller brewers and definitely the home brewers. Well, I was able to hunt down a nice big order of various hops from a local hops distributor Freshops. One of the new hops I’ll be using is called Sorachi Ace, a cultivar from Japan, mainly used in Saporro. I’m told this has a little bit of a lemon citrus flavors..we’ll see!

Sorachi Ace Pale Ale
——————–
Brewer: Josh Gum
Style: American Pale Ale
Batch: 5.00 gal, Mashed

Characteristics
—————
Recipe Gravity: 1.063 OG
Recipe Bitterness: 35 IBU
Recipe Color: 12° SRM
Estimated FG: 1.016
Alcohol by Volume: 6.3%
Alcohol by Weight: 4.9%

Ingredients
———–
American two-row 10.00 lb, mashed
Crystal 20L 0.50 lb, mashed
Crystal 40L 0.50 lb, mashed
Belgian Special “B” 0.25 lb, mashed
Rye malt 0.25 lb, mashed

Sorachi Ace 0.50 oz, whole, 60 minutes
Sorachi Ace 0.25 oz, whole, 20 minutes
Sorachi Ace 0.25 oz, whole, 5 minutes

California Ale yeast 1.00 unit, 1L starter

Notes
—–
Recipe Notes:

Batch Notes:
mashed @ 158F for 60min
OG was 15 brix (1.060)
pitched 1L starter once wort warmed to 67F, ferment started within 12 hours and the temperature is holding steady at 68F. perfect ferment so far!

2/6: FG 5.1 brix, tastes great.. I do pick up a lemon zest sort of character, not much on the aroma but more on the taste. Bitterness is not overwhelming with this one.. should be a good easy drinking beer.

4/22: carbonated in the keg for quite awhile now.. the carbonation really brings out that hop character, which in my opinion is a bit too lemon zesty. Next time I’d do away with the 20min addition. Brew #35 is a bit better, though its lacking in the complete flavor profile I was looking for. So, my final verdict on Sorachi Ace is to use it sparingly and not as the only hop

I didn’t realize I was so blind…

I went in to have my vision checked and found I have a astigmatism in my right eye and was really surprised at how poor of vision I have.. so I got some glasses! They came in today, so I picked em up and I’m trying them out.. and let me tell you, its fricking amazing how well I can see now. I’m feeling a little whoozy, like maybe I’ve had a beer or two, and everything feels like its a good 3 or 4 inches closer to me.. I noticed first when I was walking from the car (I didn’t drive with them on, I’m not ready for that yet!) to work that the ground seemed closer to me.. that experience alone was enough to really disorient me!

I haven’t had my eyes checked for probably 15 years, and have been thinking about it only for the past year but never made the appointment… how in the hell did I not realize this earlier, I’m shocked.

1/21: I’m driving with the glasses on now and feeling a bit more comfortable in them.. it still takes a little time for my vision to correct itself when I take the glasses off. Plus, I added a pic to the blog post per a request by Dan. :D Cheers!