On the fourth day of Christmas my Dr. will give to me, 2 Bilateral Sacroiliac joint injections and a partridge in a pear tree. If you don't care to hear about my BACK YET AGAIN, you can skip this post. Really it won't hurt my feelings. I'm writing it for me anyway ;-)
I went to my spinal pain management doctor today and Matt tagged along for good measure. If you remember (not that you probably care too! HA!) I had a rhizotomy on both sides of my lumbar spine at three levels a couple weeks ago. As I had mentioned then, I read some pretty horrific tales on the Internet of the utter torture that rhizotomies were supposed to be.(A rhizotomy is when they go in under an xray and insert a needle into the tiny little branch nerves that are around the joints in your spine, they then numb them and use some kind of special radio that probably doesn't play Colbie Caillet and burn the nerves. Hopefully these dead nerves won't be able to send a pain signal to your brain) After the 2 procedures, I explained that all of those posts I read had obviously been written by men. No offense to any potential male readers I may have, which is doubtful. Not that I'd rather have a rhizotomy than sit at Starbucks over a white chocolate peppermint mocha with one of my girlfriends but really it's not to much of a biggie. It's one of those procedures that you can't really hurt to try on the off chance that it works. Unfortunately, mine didn't. I had relief for about 10-11 days after one of them but that was it. That relief was actually from the anti-inflammatory that went in with the injection. BUT, I did get more done in those 10 days then I have in a long time! ;-) I could actually hear my dining room floor sigh and say AHHHH while I was wiping it. A couple of 13 years olds with a swiffer just doesn't always cut it, you know?
The Bilateral SI joint injections I'm having next week are one more effort to try to alleviate some of the pain. The SI joints are the joints that connect your pelvis to your spinal column. We are going to go in there with some nice long needles and juice them up with anti inflammatory and some yummy numbing stuff. I will be tickled PINK if it gives me 10-11 days of some relief to get me through Christmas. THAT would be awesome! Yesterday, he basically said this was about as good as it's going to get. He said some things may give me some relief but I'm not going to be pain free. Apparently, I'm a complex case (I KNEW I was a space case and a basket case but now I'm a complex case too!) It was actually such a relief to hear it. Sounds weird and pity partyish but at least now I don't have all kinds of false hope and I can deal with this now, and move on. I just will have to keep the routine I have going. Believe me, I'm thankful it's just THIS. It's not going to kill me, It could be SO much worse. He also put it into perspective when he explained that at least my fusion STOPPED further neurological damage. I can walk and talk and all that fun stuff. You might remember this first post from forever ago when I didn't know what was going on in my spine and I suddenly was walking like Quisimoto and hobbled across a major road at 2:30 in the morning to rescue a sweet white pup from certain doom not knowing one wrong twist and my walking days could have been over. Hey, I never liked sports anyway, so better me than Ray Lewis!
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