not as bad as all that

well, i'm having surgery next tuesday and between you, me, and anyone else who might be interested, I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! yes, i am looking forward to surgery! after an enlightening consultation with the neurosurgeon yesterday and confab with my husband, we decided to go for it. some of the reasons are:

1. i have numbness and pins & needles in my left toes. i've probably had the numbness all along but i was in such pain before last week that i just didn't notice it (i did notice the p&n).

2. i have significant muscle weakness in my left leg, a result of the nerve impingement, which has been getting progressively worse since the injury. i've noticed this all along, but i didn't realize how bad it was until yesterday. the surgeon is concerned that such long-term impingement (3 months and counting as of this week) could lead to permanent nerve damage, which could in turn lead to muscle atrophy and possibly permanent muscle damage, even if the nerve got better eventually!!! so how did this all become super duper clear to me especially so yesterday? i was asked to stand on my left foot only, hold the wall to keep my balance, and then stand up on my toes. super easy, right? wrong. trying with all my might i can maybe get my heel about half an inch off the floor. that shocked the shit out of me!

3. the epidural shot might work, but it might not. it's another week just to have the consultation, i have no idea how long after that until i could get the shot. they do it as an outpatient procedure in an o.r. with sedation, so it has to be scheduled. if i had the shot and it didn't work my only option is surgery, just with another six weeks of fucking around beforehand.

4. i have a mother of a disc herniation. it's severe. i'd never seen an mri before and sure as hell don't know how to read one, but i picked it right out. it looks like a fucking solar flare. seriously, no exaggeration. my g.p. said it was severe, so i was kind of surprised when the neurologist didn't seem to think it was, but the neurosurgeon agreed with my g.p.

5. it's been three months since my injury and i'm not really improving. the oral steroids have helped, but i finished them and their effect is already wearing off. doesn't seem like an auspicious sign for the success of an epidural steroid. also, i have smaller than normal bone openings for the nerves to pass through in the first place, so inflammation is probably not the entire story.

6. recent studies that followed people w/ disc herniation for five years after they either had the surgery i will have (microdiscectomy) or didn't have any surgery found people who had the surgery had fewer recurrences of subsequent, similar injuries. maybe that won't bear out at ten years, but i'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. the funny thing is, drew mentioned to me today how the neurologist we saw last week, who told us that he himself has a herniated disc that he had treated with the shot, not surgery, mentioned several times subsequent problems. i hadn't really thought about it until drew mentioned it today. the surgeon said microdiscectomy is to back surgery what an appendectomy is to general surgery: common and routine, and if you have to have surgery, that's the kind you want to have. also, he's done over a thousand of them, so i'm not getting a novice.

7. but probably the biggest factor at this point after the first two reasons is that i am tired of being fucked up. i've been injured for three months, off work for six weeks at this point; i am tired of being disabled. i can't even walk to the corner and we're the third house in on our cul-de-sac. i can't walk the dog, i can't help her up onto the bed to sleep with me, i'm not supposed to pick up the cats because at 12 and 14 lbs they're heavier than i should be lifting. i can't walk to the beach, i can't sit in a chair for very long, go to a movie, go to dinner, or ride in the car w/out it hurting like fuck. i can't do laundry, go to the store, or, depending on the day, take a shower. fuck, i can't stand up straight! all i can do is pop pain killers, lie flat on my back or my right side, watch t.v., read & knit, eat, and that's pretty much it. i can't even reliably include sleeping on the list, because sometimes it hurts so much i can't sleep. my quality of life at the moment sucks and isn't getting better. i've talked to several people who've had surgery for herniated discs of both neck and back, my lovely cousin lisa among them, and they've all said it was worth it.

so... that's the surgery thing. it'll be next tuesday, may 13th, at 11 am. prayers and positive vibes accepted! and please, don't one of you waste one millisecond of your time searching the web for alternative options to the horrors of back surgery, because my mind is made up. if you must trawl the web on my behalf, do it to send flowers or something.

i'm over the crushing disappointment of the resident ministry rejection. yes, it sucks, and i hate not getting what i want, but quite frankly i have bigger fish to fry at the moment. i don't know how things will play out now with this new development, certainly not as i had envisioned them for the last several months, but it will all work out in the end. several years ago i was lamenting about a romance i thank my lucky stars did not work out (can you say dodged thermonuclear armageddon?) when a friend of mine at the time told me, "anne, things always work out in the end. if they haven't worked out, you just haven't reached the end yet." he was right, so i'm just coasting until i reach the end of all this, when it will all be worked out.