Well it's been awhile..I was progressing really well and then a cascade of evil wicked things started happening. My husband came home from our Mayo trip with back pain. At first it was just uncomfortable and 3 Ibuprophen 4 times a day seemed to help. Then it continued to progress until he got to the point where I could tell he was in pain continuously. So I called the Orthopedic doctor and got him in for an appt.

They xrayed and declared it was minor arthritis. They started him on physical therapy which did nothing but make the pain worse. So he went back to the doctor and it was decided that he was suffering from bi-lateral sacroilliac joint pain. The doctor injected in the area of the sacroilliac joints both sides with a steroid. Two weeks later he was no better. At that point I said Enough! and called the ortho and insisted on an MRI. After getting the results of the MRI, the doctor called and told us that he wanted to refer him to a neurosurgeon in the Dallas area. Here is the MRI result:

1. Severe Spinal Stenosis at L4-L5 due to minimal diffuse annular disc buldge and severe facet hypertrophy and ligamentum flavum thickening. There is associated mild narrowing of the neural foramina bilaterally.

2. Minimal diffuse annular disc bulge at L2-L3, L3-L4, and L5-S1 with facet disease resulting in only mild foraminal narrowing bilaterally.

3. Multiple nerve root cysts throughout the lumbar spine and sacrum as an incidental finding.

4. Moderate schmorl's node superior endplate of L3.

The surgeon wants to do a mylogram first and then do surgery. He showed us the MRI. Even to an idiot the narrowing and spinal cord impingement was very obvious. His spinal cord is really good until you get down to L4-L5 and there it looks like someone put a rubber band around it and shrunk it down to a tiny passageway. It's almost totally blocked.

He's scheduled for the mylogram on the 26th and we go from there. Surgeon said he'd need to see the mylogram to know for sure, but he thought he could do a laminectomy in that area and not have to fuse. I'd sure like to have your thoughts on this.

As to my thoughts on this surgery..Shooooosh!! It knocked the air out of me. He's always been so healthy and so fit. He's 72 years old, all muscle, takes no meds and has no known medical problems other than this back issue that has just come up. He did tell me that he had some pain before the trip to Mayo but he just thought it'd go away and I guess with all the driving, lifting luggage, wheeling me around in the wheelchair etc. it kicked the pain into high gear.

Me, I was getting around a whole lot better and then last Thurs, my ankle started swelling. On Tues I got a steriod injection into the ankle joint and am still gimpy. I gave up last night and started using crutches because it was almost impossible to walk. Does bad luck come in 3's??!!

Thoughts on the surgery would sure be appreciated.

Billye