(written on 29th from notes taken previously)
Poor mama was pretty sick this morning. She had been better for a few days, but now she’s right back in the thick of it. 😕
I set my laundry drying before heading out to Haven Hill this morning.
I don’t remember if I mentioned it before, but I noticed that the rear lights on my skid steer on one side were broken. The tail light assembly is made out of a harder rubber that degrades in the sun, and it had come to the point that it was just crumbling and could no longer hold itself the slot it’s designed for.
I had ordered a replacement set of tail lights from Amazon that arrived, so I wanted to get those put on before I left for Utah.
It was a little challenging getting the new ones in, as the rubber is shaped around hard plastic, and you’ve got to sort of bend everything into place without breaking the plastic.
Fortunately, I managed to get both tail lights installed without damaging the new assemblies. 🙏
From there, I left Haven Hill and headed over to meet up with the person I had been mad at with regards to the damage done to my stuff I had lent them.
Relationships are more important than stuff.
Gratefully, we were able to have a great conversation. 🙏
I headed back to my mom’s place to grab my laundry out of the dryer, and then we drove over to Wendy’s together for a goodbye lunch.
That’s become our tradition when we get together, and it was good to spend time with each other. 🤍
Love you, mama. 🩵
After dropping my mom off and bidding her and Thomas farewell, I set out on the road about noon, pointing Rover’s nose north.
I stopped off in Webb City to grab gas at the Walmart Neighborhood Market, realizing after I drove away that the pump had cut off quite early, so I came back, finished filling it up, and headed back out on my way.
With the Iran war, gas is pretty darn expensive, and that looked like one of the last gas stations to have halfway-decently-priced gas. 😅
It’s a long drive to Utah… 20ish hours if you follow the speed limit, and I generally drive a fair bit below the speed limit on the freeways, so… longer. 🙃
I listened to a book called Non-violent Communication, which had a few interesting ideas that I found useful.
Somewhere I think in West Kansas? I drove into a gnarly dust storm. It was bad enough for the weather peeps to send out one of those emergency weather warnings that blared on my phone.
Gratefully, I apparently managed to hit the storm at exactly the perfect time because when I came out the other side, police had shut the freeway down heading east, and I’m guessing that behind me they had shut the freeway down hitting west as well.
Lucky me. 🙃
I spent a little while chatting with my friend Cory on the phone and stopped off at a rest area to see if I might possibly be lucky enough to get a photo of the pretty sweet lightning storm, but by the time I got to a safe place to take pictures, all the flashes deep in the clouds instead of out in the open.
Oh well. 🙃
Texted a little bit with my mom.
I also started listening to another book after that, one about Joseph Smith and the Gold Plates, and then I think it was somewhere in Colorado? that I started questioning whether or not it was the best decision to have the MRIs done and to pay for a super expensive spinal injection.
I realized that I had forgotten to get pre-approval for the MRIs, not that my insurance would cover much of anything anyway, but still.
So that was weighing on me a little bit.
But even more important to me was this: After thinking about the procedure a little bit, it dawned on me that I don’t think the spinal injection would actually do anything to heal the issues that I have. It’s simply a procedure to reduce pain and discomfort.
🤔
Pain, although crappy, in my particular circumstance lets me know when something isn’t right, and I can make this worse faster if I don’t care for myself.
I already have a hard time avoiding the exertions that exacerbate symptoms. I think there’s a good chance I would be more likely to push myself beyond what I ought to if I didn’t have the pain as a reminder.
I looked at the information about the injections on the websites of a couple reputable organizations (Harvard, and the Cleveland Clinic), and I think both recommended the injection as more of a last resort.
Or maybe not last… maybe surgery was last… But certainly after lifestyle changes and physical therapy.
If I’m being honest with myself, I haven’t properly done the physical therapy that I’ve been directed to do in the past.
Not from the surgeons anyway.
I think a lot of the reason I haven’t is that I just have no faith that anything doctors suggest will do any good.
Given that I’ve never followed through with physical therapy as laid out for me, it seemed to me to be foolish to go straight to an invasive procedure without giving the physical therapy a decent shake first.
So I mulled that around in my brain as I drove, and because of all that thinking, decided to stop earlier than I otherwise would have (Originally, I had planned on stopping somewhere along I-80 westbound in Wyoming, but now I was thinking about canceling my MRI appointments for Monday and heading straight to South Dakota.
Gratefully, I found a spot about 1:15 a.m. to stop for the night just outside of Fort Collins–a rest area that allowed stays as long as 16 hours. 🙏
Long day driving.
Toilet seat seemed to do me quite well also. 🙏
Lift the world.
Bring it on.
~ stephen
Lift the World 