Baked Apple Wedges and My Medial Branch Block!

Such an exciting and varied title you say? Yes, that's because I'm all about the RANDOM thoughts! LOL Anyway, I'll do the apples first in case you don't care about my little ol' spinal pain procedure I had today.

I saw these on Martha's site the other day and thought they looked yummy. I was right! LOL Martha doesn't do much wrong in this chicka's eyes anyway. The recipe called for McIntosh and I didn't seem to have them in my produce department so I used good old Granny Smith. She's a nice firm old lady that bakes up real nice not mushy. You are probably wondering why the heck I baked something after the day I had but you know what? I like to bake and it takes my mind off stuff and I was on meds too! That helps of course! Of course all of this WAS after a 3 hour nap too! Plus I sat down at the island for the entire thing PLUS and probably most importantly, I served my family hotdogs for dinner! LOL BUT I did include this super delish homemade sweet relish my friend Julie made that totally made my hotdogs very GOURMET for sure! I really preferred these wedges cold and I think they'd be great served chilled with a light swirling of hot caramel and a dollop of homemade whip cream sprinkled with nutmeg. But who am I kidding, you can just use the stuff in the can! If you served them cold, you could make them ahead of time, like in the morning before a party or dinner. Here's the link for the recipe: okay, son of a gun, it won't let me link it! Your going to have to go to www.marthastewart.com and search for it. Sorry!

AND now, what you've all been waiting for! Robyn's experience with her first lumbar medial branch block! I get up on the table with my Dolce and Gabana blue cotton gown. You know the one with the ties in the back? Sexy. She cleans my back we make small talk, yadda yadda yadda. The doctor comes in again just a itsy bit of small talk and then he turns on the
xray machine and like the dork I am. I say, "Is that my back?" And no, my friends I wasn't under the influence of my pain meds because you can't take them because they will interfere with the diagnostic ability of the test. I'm just that much of an air head. So Dr. Doctor then says, "SO, I SEE WHY YOU ARE IN SO MUCH PAIN!" He briefly shows me some of the stuff that's wrong with my spine below my fusion. Then begins inserting these big ass needles into my facet joints (you'll have to wikipedia that one). I can cleary see the straw sized (I'm grossly exaggerating, a little) on the xray. I ask Dr. Doctor if the anesthetic he is using has any steroid in it. (I had read that it often does) He said just a little and I wanted to know how effective it would be. He said, "for some people it might last forever or a long time, for YOU, I doubt it will last a week." Um. Okay. He put 3 of those itsy bitsy (not so much) needles into 3 different vertebrae on the right side in my back and we are done. He said I'll come back next week for the left side. So I go to recovery and wait 15 minutes. Meanwhile I'm thinking I think I feel pretty good. The nurse comes and has me repeat my range of movement exercises and THEY ARE BETTER and I FEEL BETTER. I actually didn't realize how MUCH pain I had been in until some of it was gone! It was considered 60% successful which is good, it has to be at least 50% for them to then go on and do the Neurotomy (Rhizotomy) which is the nerve damaging stuff. I was smiling and so happy. I think I alarmed the nurse and she said, "you know this is temporary, right? It lasts a few minutes to about an hour" I told her I knew that but it was so GREAT to feel better even for just a few minutes! LOL Ultimately, it lasted about 25 minutes total. But hey, I'll take it! So I'm a candidate for the damaging, this whole process will take about 3 more weeks. Yay ME!