Last October, we were facing many challenges including my long-term unemployment and concerns about being able to stay in our home. Grace’s condition took a turn for the worse and she needed emergency surgery on her spine. The next couple of months, which included Halloween, children’s birthdays, Christmas, and New Year’s, were very difficult. Grace has healed from surgery, but still suffers from cauda equina syndrome, with nerve damage that may be permanent. On January 11th, we had a conversation about her condition, surgery, and recovery, at our outdoor burn pit. Unfortunately I had not brought the furry filter to reduce wind noise, so occasional gusts of wind partially drowned out our voices. I have used Izotope RX to reduce the wind noise. It can’t completely bring back the damaged audio, so there are parts where it is hard to hear us. I apologize for that, but we have to take the opportunities we get to record a conversation without the kids. They did not want to come out in the cold! After our main conversation outdoors, we had a further chat inside to talk in a bit more detail about her surgery and the results.
For more information about cauda equina syndrome, consult the Cleveland Clinic and Wikipedia.
Here is a direct link to the MP3 file, which should work with most browsers.
The Podcast feed is here.
This episode is also on YouTube here. It is audio-only. Note that because I often use brief clips of copyrighted music, YouTube may insert ads or block viewing in some locations (for example, some episodes can’t be viewed in Cuba). Even if a video can be played now, there is no guarantee YouTube won’t change these permissions in the future.
The Podcast episodes playlist on YouTube, which should show all available episodes, is here.