Yes y'all, I'm back. I'm still in the middle of a bad back attack but it's a little better. This past week Monday morning, I wasn't able to sit or stand longer than a minute hence the reason to take time off. Let's just say it was quite awful. It was brought on by changing the sheets on the waterbed when I felt a sharp pain in my lower back and I couldn't stand straight. I was in tears. I got my husband to drive me to the ER and they took x-rays and did countless other things and then hooked me up to an IV and wanted to keep me overnight. Nope ain't doing that shit. So finally after a few hours of crying the second doctor on ER duty (I liked him, he was nice) set me up with a really great anti-pain cocktail in my IV. I don't remember what was in it but I can tell you after they kept me for another hour for observation, I was sent on my merry little ol' way. I flew home almost of my own accord and went to bed right away after I let y'all know I would be out for a few days. I slept until Tuesday morning. My husband called my spinal doctor for an emergency appointment and it was set up for Tuesday. Lucky me.
I went to see my Spinal Doc on Tuesday afternoon on an emergency and he shot me up again to take the edge off a little. He almost salivated over the x-rays and MRI CD pictures that I brought with me. I guess he was hoping to pay off his wife's new car or buy a new fishing boat or whatever when he saw the damage. He said I have a pinched nerve between the L3 and L4 on my left side which explained the lightning bolt pain running up and down my left leg, butt, and lower back. He said the degenerative disc disease and facet joint osteoarthritis of L3 to S1 is progressing slowly up my spine. He told me this same exact thing 16 years ago but then it was between S1 and L5 at the time. I have no discs between S1, L5, or L4. He wants to alleviate the pain by going in and putting spacers from L5 to L3. Yeah, that's a hard NO all around. I've already done the research on anything that could help or hurt my condition a year ago from rods to spacers and it's not good for elderly patients over 70 years of age with degenerative disc disease and facet joint osteoarthritis or Lumbar Spinal Stenosis (LSS) as it's called.
Anyways, my doctor asked me how I got though my life with this pain. I smiled and said it's like going through heavy labor pains every minute of the day 24/7. You get used to it after awhile. Then I told him I'm not going back to the injections or RFO, they don't work on me anymore and it's a waste of my money. They last only 3 months when they should last 2 years. I heal too damned fast. Also, I said that I'm 86ing the much needed surgery that he was pushing on me because the downside outweighs the good. You see, there is a chance the spacers could crack my vertebra in my spine and or fall out of place if I turn or stretch my back which would then require more surgery to fish them out and what not. The rods don't help and cause more pain and limited movement for the patient too. No rest for the wicked. So, that's a hard FUCK NO.
I really didn't use the F word but he got the gist of where I was coming from on all this. He said physical therapy and pain meds was my last hope. I told him I've been doing TENs, PT and drugs for almost 7 years now. Way before the shots and TENs I was working with a high level of pain since 1992. He was really in awe of my ability to control my pain levels for so long. He was the one who started with the blocker shots and the bilateral radiofrequency oblations back in 2009. Look up RFO. It's a sweet procedure to go through while awake, lying on your stomach and the doctor doesn't wait for the local to take affect before he starts jamming hollow foot long ass needles into your back and inserting the foot long probe into them, burning the nerves of your facet joints to kill the long term pain. Yeah, good times. A bone marrow tap is much more fun.
Right now I'm really pushing it, as it were, by sitting longer than 20 minutes to write all this shit and my pain level is maxing out. I'm usually doing my stretches, back exercises twice a day, walking intervals on my treadmill for 20 minutes twice a day which is quite easy with my TENs unit running, wearing my back brace religiously, I shouldn't say that, I'm an atheist. Sometimes when the beast (pain) is often giving me a level higher than 8 and the TENs isn't helping I lie down on the other heating pad in the bedroom with a pillow under my knees for while and meditate. It's hard to do but I can do it. I can tame it to a 6. Everything I'm doing to control my pain, I have done every waking hour of the day and sometimes at night, I learned from going through countless hours of physical therapy over these many years. Stuff I can do there is a waste of my money because I can do the same thing at home.
If you are interested in finding out more about my little problem then you can go online and look up the extensive articles and some pictures and videos about it. Try looking here: https://www.mayoclinic.org/, here: https://my.clevelandclinic.org/ or here: https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/ . Use Lumbar Spinal Stenosis (LSS) as the key word lookup. There are a lot of articles listed plus procedures to stop or control pain that I have described to pick and choose from. Trust me, the Mayo Clinic and the Cleveland Mayo Clinic are the first and second best sites in the U.S. for all medical info and John Hopkins comes in a close 3rd. WebMD is bottom of the barrel pickings when it comes to medical information and where to get help so don't waste your time or effort.
So, yeah, I'm back. Besides, I have that idiot fuckwad TЯ☭mp and his butt leeches RepubliCONS in Washington DC to taunt all day long. It's my job now. I can't go out and walk around protesting for obvious medical reasons. I have congressmen and women of both the House and Senate on both sides of the aisle to agitate with phone calls and countless emails. We have to cause Good Trouble to push them to do the job we are paying them to do. Then there are my blog memes to post to keep y'all smiling and entertained which I dearly love doing. I now know what JackieSue got out of it. I live for it all. It may take me almost forever to post my blog shit but it WILL get done. Anyways, what's a grown old woman to do? I have to keep busy or I'll get into some really bad good trouble. I'm too pretty for jail, baby, and I'm all out of bail money.
May the odds be ever in my favor.
Let the pain games begin.