I have not been the best at communicating with everyone and I am sorry for being that. This spring I took a new position with The Sherwin Williams Company in Cleveland and have been commuting to Cleveland from Toledo for about 3 months.Around that time, I also ran into some serious health issues. Instead of having everyone bealarmed over something I could not control, I decided to wait. Myillness ended up requiring surgery and it was completed on the 4th ofJune with moderate success. In short, I am doing relatively well, am in Toledo and recuperating from home. I have been working from my Toledohome for two weeks and am going back to commutingfrom Cleveland.
It turns out that I had a tumor called an hemangioblastoma insidemy spinal column (yes, inside the bundle of nerves 
) . I startedhaving severe symptoms on the first day I started the new job. Just asluck would have it, of course. It is a benign type of tumor that has areasonably good prognosis and is the least likely to reoccur (knock on wood). They have removed most of it. The surgery was more complex thanthe doctors had originally anticipated. The four hour surgery actuallyended up taking over eight hours. Instead of the tumor “popping out” as the doctors had anticipated, it was completely vascularized and had to be scooped out, one smalllayer at a time. Since they were messing around in there for a longtime, they had to hook my whole body up to neural impulse generatorsand monitor the evoke potentials for each zone after every scoop. Oncethey started seeing loss of voltage across my right leg, they stoppedscooping and sewed me up. I did end up biting halfway through mytongue because my bite block slipped during one of the tests. I nowhave a huge laceration on my tongue, which is also healing well.
The surgery area hurts as expected, but that pain is going awayquickly. The score so far is that my left leg is about 20% numb and myright leg is about 50-60% numb (no feeling, limited movement).Recovery is about 1-2% per week. I am working on Physical Therapy andlots of walking with lots of pain meds. They are reducing the painmeds drastically but recovery will take a while still. I m going back to work next week. I will take the bus to work. Ican walk and take care of myself today, but am quite weak and Iquickly get tired when walking.
I hope all of you and your families are doing well. Please take care of yourselves. I am proof that we are all quite vulnerable. 