This week has not been one of my better ones. Starting last Thursday, the back went from feeling good to horrendous pain. That joyous pain lasted for 4 straight days. On the fourth day, Sunday, it was Drew's Special Olympics swimming competition and instead of enjoying watching him compete and get a silver medal, I was looking at my watch and wondering how soon we could get out of there because not only was the back in excruciating pain but all the nervy stuff was fired up as well. Basically, it felt like someone had dipped my torso, buttocks, and the back of my thighs in acid and they were on fire. Just having my clothing touching them was driving me out of my head. This is literally the worst pain I have felt in my life and I am speaking as someone who has slammed her body into a tree at a high rate of speed. That was a papercut comparatively speaking. I talked to my dad Sunday afternoon and bawled like a baby on the phone. My record for only crying maybe once annually has been shattered this week. I told my dad that something had to give here and if the pain wouldn't stop, I was going to either throw myself off the Royal Gorge bridge (because really, no mere overpass will do, gotta at least do it in style) or become a street drug user. My dad, being my dad, chuckled and told me that his vote was for drug addiction. He reminded me that after all my mom's surgeries, she has a stockpile of Vicodin, Oxycontin, and various other fun narcotics and they could keep my high for a good 12 to 18 months. Ha, ha!
By Monday morning, the pain had lessened and I felt like I could handle life again. On Tuesday, I had my first PT visit. She went over all my history as well as the notes from my neurosurgeon, and told me that I absolutely should not run ever again. She then went on to tell me that my options for exercise consist of power walking (zzzzzzzzz), hiking, maybe biking, and swimming or pool running. If I ignore all of that, I will put myself in more pain and in a position to get my spine fused together in the very near future. I also left confused because I had been under the impression that the spinal dr. thought the bulging disc was the major cause of my symptoms and the PT seemed to think it was the slipping vertebrae.
Frustrated by the not running again edict and the lame exercise choices. Back to thinking about that bridge option.
Yesterday, I went back into the spinal guy's office to find out what to do about the pain and what the story is about the cause of my pain and my surgical options. (Let me just say here, as an aside, what kind of jackass, spinal doctor stocks his waiting room and exam rooms with hard, uncomfortable plastic chairs? Everyone walking in that door has spine pain and you are going to make them wait an hour on a hard as nails chair! This guy should change his last name to Mengle.) Long story short, the major pain instigator is my lovely, L5 vertebrae who seems to have a real independent streak and likes to routinely break from the pack and move in his own direction. There is a long name for this - spondo something or other. Anyway, should the PT not relieve my pain symptoms, I am looking at having the lower part of my spine fused together. He also said that even with the PT, I am probably going to need the fusion at some point in the next 10 to 15 years.
Again, the toes are on the edge of the bridge and the swan dive off into the canyon is looking real nice right now.
**by the way, before any of you decide you need to organize a suicide watch, I am no where near serious about the bridge thing. Not yet anyway. Besides, if I leave Kevin in charge, the kids will subsist on chips and root beer and I just can't do that to them.
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