Well, I had my MRI

45 minutes in a narrow little tube on Saturday, and I already have the results.

My family doctor called yesterday and said that the MRI showed that a fragment of my disc has broken off and his "kinda hanging down", interfering with the nerves.

I'm kinda struggling to really understand that, but basically, I have somehow managed to re-injure the same disc as before.

They are recommending a surgical consult at this point.

But... more because a neurosurgeon is the expert that knows about these types of injuries and can recommend the best course of treatment.

Apparently there are some new sort of steroidal injections that have shown some success in shrinking these types of fragments.

Or he said the surgeon might think that several rounds of physical therapy might due the trick.

I don't know.

I'd be willing to try the injections.

But the PT? I guess after last time... I just hate to spend all that time and effort going thru physical therapy, only to end up on the surgeon's table anyway, you know?

But that's why he's sending me to the surgeon. To see.

The good news is that the neurosurgery practice I went to five years ago (and 45 minutes away), does have surgeons that come to the hospital here, and our family doctor highly recommends I stay with that practice. Apparently it is the neurosurgery practice that they recommend to all of their patients, and consider the top in the area.

Good to know.

As far as my symptoms go, I've had very little pain since that one 4-day episode. I did make the mistake of jumping last week with FireGirl, and immediately knew it was a mistake. I was in very minor pain for a couple of hours, but it was enough to remind me that I need to be carefu - really careful - until we get this taken care of.

But I do still have the tingling / numbish sensation in my legs, particularly my right leg. It's become so frequent now that I don't even really notice anymore. Unless someone asks me, or I'm telling someone about it (like right now when I'm typing). Like at the MRI when the tech asked if I'd had any tingling recently. I sat for a minute and was like "oh, yeah, like right now?"

It doesn't really hinder me at this point, just is a minor annoyance.

But I know the drill, I know the lecture. The what-if's that go along with leg tingling & numbness. The possibilities for it progressing into worse - much worse.

And so... I will call to schedule my consult sometime this week. And at work I've begun making sure the work instructions for my job are up-to-date, and given my boss a heads up on the possibility of me being off. Seeing as how I'm the only one who knows how to do my job and all, I figure they'd appreciate that.

Part of me says I should be taking this more seriously than I am. I guess part of my brain knows how serious it could be. Potentially.
But... I also feel like I've been thru so much worse, right?

And this is just really inconvenient, which is annoying me.

I have things I want to do. And a job. And a house to clean. And a daughter to take care of.
In reverse order of priority.

Right now, I'm functioning, for the most part, normally.

Sure, this could potentially be serious, but if I have surgery I will definitely not be functioning normally, for what is most likely an extended period of time.

That idea annoys me. Greatly.

Thanks for checking in. I'll keep ya'll updated.