Moving and Preexisting Conditions.

First off, I want to say to my readers (if any of you remember me) that I am sorry I haven’t written anything lately.  Life outside of camping and RV.Net sometimes takes all of your time.  So, let me tell you what has happened to me in real life.  As some of you know, we have been looking for a new house out in the country (we like camping so it should follow we like the country).  We had several near misses and looked at some wonderful and beautiful homes.  It seemed that when we found a nice piece of land, we didn’t like the house and, when we liked the house, the land was less than wonderful.  Still we found several that we liked but could never come to terms.  However late in November that changed, we found a three bedroom farm house on 11 1/2 acres.  We made a very reasonable offer, and, almost to our surprise, it was quickly accepted.  Which was nice because we were having storage and other problems at our old place and wanted to move quickly.  Now I hadn’t purchased property in many years, and found some of the new government rules and regulations to be very, very confusing as well as well as having to play the mortgage percentage game!

But to make a long story short, we started MOVING Thanksgiving weekend, for us it was truly Thanksgiving!  So, that is when we lost our internet connection.  But the following Monday my real problems began.   As some of you know, I hunt, and I was out on the first day of buck season with my daughter.  While walking, I damaged a preexisting injury.  The original injury was a severe muscle tear which damaged the circulation in my lower left leg.  I developed a small venous stasis ulcer 4 years ago when I bruised my ankle area  which took months to heal.  This time the injury was a very small rub/blister to the area where the ulcer had been.  We continued to move and work, and, to be honest, I kind of ignored the small injury.  Which is the wrong thing to do.  By the time Christmas had come and gone, we finally had finished moving and were soon to finally connect back up to the internet.  But then the very small wound had grown to about the size of a dime, and I knew I had to go get help.

The Wound was not healing because it had a underlying infection. So now a month and a half after seeking help and two rounds of antibiotic treatments and wound care, many missed days of work and the original wound growing to about 2 inches across and feeling like something was chewing on my ankle 24 hours a day, I think I can say I have finally turned the corner and it is healing.

Now, what does this have to do with Camping and writing about health and safety for RV.Net?  Simply this; you should never ignore preexisting conditions when planning how to care for yourself, or to ignore small injuries.  Even more, you should never wait to seek treatment for injuries that are not healing.  If this had been the summer, I would have missed most of the camping season!  As it turned out, I have lost some money and had to spend weeks with a very painful injury that immobilized me and I am rehabbing.  But I am back to work full time (and still have a job!).  I also have plans for several articles and even more plans for our new property.  The biggest of which is plans for building a parking area / shelter for our camper.  Hopefully I can continue to share with you for years to come and we can all continue to learn (usually from my mistakes!).

Your Obedient Servant,

Gary Smith, Jr.