These legs.

My legs appear to be disinterested in whatever my brain asks of them. No movement. No sensation. Not even a good-natured “screw you”. Just complete indifference. I might as well be commanding responses from the legs of the patient in the room next to me or of a squirrel in Peoria.

I’ve also lost motor control of and sensation in my left hand. Taken together, this technically renders me a quadriplegic. Personally, I think of myself as more of a 2.5-plegic but I guess there is no such rating scale outside of Paul’s head, so quad it is.

The doctor’s ran another MRI scan after radiation treatment #3 yesterday in an effort to determine why the sudden loss of sensation after treatment #2. Not surprisingly, a definitive explanation was not obtained. The doc’s seem to interpret this as good news, however, as the tumor is apparently well behaved and there is no indication of further cord compression – suggesting to them that the recent setback may be reversible. We shall see . . . one day at a time.

Cec continues to remind me that we are dealing with two distinct issues here: c***** and spinal cord injury (SCI). I’ve got to do everything to fight the former (i.e., blasting with radiation) and then address the latter with the many emerging technologies that are rapidly entering the marketplace. Nevertheless, it’s difficult to be connected to a pair of legs that would seemingly prefer to be somewhere else. But I will continue to coax them back somehow . . . perhaps with the promise of grape stomping . . .