Duck

I was going to blog about a Duck. But blogger is having trouble uploading my pictures, so I will blog about a duck another time. Rest assured that I WILL blog, I will blog SOON, and I will blog soon about a duck. Yup. Gonna blog about a duck. maybe two. two ducks. Later. duck blogging.

"I'm afraid you're a little off" said the Doctor

Okay. So on Monday I decided to cheat Murphy's Law and clean my house so I wouldn't have to have surgery. This actually makes sense because everytime I get injured or really sick or require someone to come into my house for any reason my house is a complete disaster and only gets worse with my being laid up. It NEVER happens when the house is clean. So I figured that if I clean the house and do all the laundry and make everything really nice-I even dusted my bedroom--then I wouldn't have to have surgery. It really makes sense if you think about it, plus on the off chance it didn't work then I'd have a nice clean house when people came to help me.

So I went to the actual surgeon today and here's the verdict. I do have a herniated disc between T5 and T6 which is causing me topical pain. I also have a thoracic strain, probably the same one I've had since November that hasn't healed yet. But the nerves from this disc are not being disturbed which is a very good thing because the doctor told me that this particular operation is one the most dangerous and difficult operations there is and no surgeon in his right mind wants to ever do it unless he absolutely has to. Whew, dodged that bullet. But because he is the nerve specialist who is not intimidated by MRIs, he noticed what no one else had noticed yet. My pain and nerve problems simply can NOT be caused by that area of the back. They have to be caused by the Lumbar--so basically because a lot of my pain is thoracic they did that MRI and found a relatively inconsequential disc problem and heaped the blame on that instead of finding out the real problem. So he went out in the hallway and came back with a physical therapist and they discussed many things in very technical terms. The surgeon wanted to order a Lumbar MRI to see what the problem is down there, but the physical therapist convinced him to wait a month and let him see what he could do because he thinks that won't even be necessary.

So then I went over to the physical therapist's office because he just happened to have a free several hours (I know?), and while we were talking about things he suddenly stopped and asked me why I was standing with my weight on my right leg. Apparently because I'm right handed I should be standing on my left leg. Long story short, my right leg is 2-3 mm shorter than my left. This is enough of a problem that my entire spine is curvy--it goes off to the right and then tries to straighten up by curving back left around the thoracic area, hence the thoracic disc bulging to the right. He said he would bet good money that I have at least one if not two discs bulging to the left in the lumbar. So now I have to wear a lift in my shoe. How retarded is that?!? Good news though is that with the lift and lots of physical therapy he thinks that he can fix not only the pain but also the underlying disc problems. Woohoo!

So I win twice! Because I don't need surgery AND my house is all sparkly clean for me to enjoy! My activities are much more restricted--I'm not allowed to do ANYTHING that hurts that I don't absolutely have to do, for instance he said I have to find a substitute and I'm not allowed to play the piano again until he says so. :( I can't mop the floor at all or drive more than I have to, but the promise of being done with this mess soon and non-surgically is awesome. And he says that I should be able to play golf this summer which I'm really excited about since we have such awesome courses here.

And the happiest thing of all is that my Mom is coming here in 16 days!!!

My new car!!!!!

This is just a picture I took off the net...my car doesn'thave those stupid wheels. But other than that this is the car we bought on saturday, a 1996 Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited. Some of you might remember that we used to own a 93 that was blue, well when we saw this one we knew we couldn't pass it up. It's in absolutely perfect condition, with new tires and very well maintained. And it's grey on the inside, so it's perfect for us Buckeye Fans! I'm really really happy with it and incredibly relieved that we have a second car. We were making it work, but it was horrible. The family time was really nice, but I was driving for 4-5 hours everyday and the kids were with me for most of that and it was just too much. I'm trying really hard to avoid surgery and driving is something I'm supposed to limit if not avoid completely. I have to drive a little but now thankfully I don't have to be running around everywhere all the time. Hooray!! (I'm a little excited, can you tell?)

However I did something really bad on Friday--I don't know what I did exactly but I was trying to stretch my back at work and found a new stretch that I thought was great until suddenly I couldn't move and my arm went numb. It eased up after about an hour but I've been in absolutely incredible pain ever since. I'm laying here on my heating pad with my pain pills and still want to cry! (But on the bright side when the ambulance came to church yesterday to get the sister with shortness of breath and chest pain it wasn't ME! That may sound mean to those who don't know me, but it's happened before and I was happy to be on the helping the ambulance find the building end this time.) My appointment with the neurosurgeon is on the 10th so hopefully he'll give me some physical therapy and pain management techniques and shelve the surgery for now. I have lots of other things I'm doing now and this back thing is getting in the way. I got a raise at work, so I'd like to work a lot, I'm trying to get a few springcleaning/organizing things done and there's two rooms I'd like to paint. Not to mention some excersizing!

On that note however, I have great news--I bought new jeans on saturday and they are 2 sizes smaller than the ones I wore when I moved to Ohio. So I'm pretty happy about that! The girl scouts are trying to derail me though--drat those cookies!