Went to see Tim Minchin in concert last night (in Brighton, London was sold out but there are some late tickets now for Fri/Sat/Sun). I am clearly a much bigger fan than I thought because I knew ALL the songs he was talking about.
One moment which stood out was when he was explaining all the definitions of the word “mole” (for song reasons) which includes a measurement in science linked to Avogadro’s constant, “which is 6.022x10 to the…” at which point myself and a surprising number of the crowd yelled “23”! (It is 23. My chemistry degree has never been so useful).
So my parents were planning on leaving today to make the trip to come up and visit us and other family for a bit. Those plans have been sidelined as my mom is in the hospital. A CT scan found a splitting artery in her head, which puts her at risk for stroke.
They will be doing an MRI tomorrow and make a plan of action. I have no idea how invasive a procedure it is to fix this, or the recovery time, so I have no idea if they will get to come up for any of the time they had planned or not. I don’t even know how much risk she is currently in.
This morning, I was sitting at my dining room table, drinking coffee. When I stood up, I tripped over my left foot. (I wish I had a video of this, because not falling on my face required some super fast left leg movement, and I’d like to see what the hell I actually did.) I tripped because none of the muscles[1] on the lower front of my leg were working, and one of the functions of them is to bring your toes up as you walk. It’s very disturbing to try to contract a muscle and have absolutely nothing happen.[2] I was pretty sure they were asleep because I’d somehow compressed the nerve while sitting, but I couldn’t help but wonder “Am I having a stroke?” Fortunately, I started gettig a little movement back pretty quickly, but it was an hour or so before it was nearly normal.
[1] for anatomy nerds: the stuff innervated by the deep fibular nerve, the tibialis anterior, fibularis tertius, and the intrinsic toe extensors (which I can never remember hte names of)
[2] I have had bad back pain problems caused by poor hip mobility. The poor hip mobility was itself caused by poor ankle mobility, which was no doubt caused by breaking my right ankle. Twice. So I do some goofy exercises that specifically target them (and the rest of the ankle and foot muscles), and have good volitional control of them.
This was a regular experience when I used to rock climb. With a blasted brachialis, you might go to wash your hair or some such and the hands just fold back like there is nothing to hold them in place. So you kind of angle your arm to create pressure directly through the forearm and work up a lather with your wrist.
