PS--P is for Peroneal and S is for Syn-Visc

P:  My youngest son has had a baffling condition in his left foot for the last several months--his big toe droops down and he has trouble dorsiflexing his foot.  His muscles in his shin and the top of his ankle are atrophying.  We have learned that this is probably due to some problem with his Peroneal Nerve--a nerve that leaves the spine at the L5 region and travels down his leg to his ankle.  We just went to Hopkins Medical and learned that his nerve damage is probably located near his knee and that it is not deteriorating--both relatively good news--we hope to isolate the problem in the near future and hopefully correct the problem through surgery or otherwise.

With that as a backdrop, the events of last weekend are pretty surreal.  On Saturday night i was watching my daughter play Kate in "Kiss Me Kate" and when I got up from Intermission I noticed that my right leg was numb--like it was asleep.  Later I had trouble driving home and stumbled a bit as my right foot didn't seem to work right.  when I woke up on Sunday, I was no longer able to dorsiflex my foot and I had no muscle strength at all in the top of my ankle and my lower shin.  Further, most of the outside of my lower leg was numb.  Given Alex's situation, I immediately suspected that I had damaged my Peroneal Nerve by the way I was sitting during the play.

To make a long story short, I went to my ortho on Monday and confirmed that this was the problem.  He thought it was temporary and that I should expect to get most of the functionality back in 4-6 weeks.  However as I sit here on thursday, I already feel like I have 30-50% of the strength back--my running seems to be less impacted and that's good given I have the Half-IM this weekend.

S: I'm now 5 weeks from the start of my latest Syn-Visc cycle and the miracle has happened again--I am starting to run with only mild pain now in my left knee.

PS--take nothing for granted--you never know when it's going to be taken away from you!