I finally went to the back doctor yesterday. My physical was way back on March 29. The resulting MRI, April 14. And now finally to the back doctor. Sheesh, that took a long time.
It turns out I’m in pretty good shape. I have degenerative disc disease, which doesn’t surprise me. The doctor called it ‘moderate’. There are some bulges and some narrow spots where my nerves are, but no nerves are being crushed, so there’s no immediate danger of nerve damage.
In the picture below, the two green arrows point at the two most damaged discs. They are dark instead of light colored. That means they’re in bad shape. And they’re bulging into the light-colored area a little, but there still is plenty of space there for nerves, so no worries. The vertebrae next to the discs have some light patches on them. That is bruising or damage from the bone absorbing shock instead of discs doing their job.
The recent changes in the location my pain didn’t seem to worry the doctor at all, so I’m not going to worry about it either. She said change is natural. I asked her what would be a bad change. She said numbness and loss of strength are the biggies. If I ever had both, she said, I would need attention immediately. So my questions about permanent damage were answered.
She said that perhaps a partial explanation of my new pains was explained by the horizontal-slice picture below. You can see that the image is not symmetrical. Where the arrow is pointing, there is a clump of lighter material. She said this could be scar tissue, some sort of disc bulge, or “a physiological change resulting from surgery”. That last option sounded weird and a little scary, so I choose not to think about it.
The doctor said the only thing left to check was if my bones had become unstable because of the weak discs. If they are unstable, I would need fusion (surgery). She thought it was unlikely, but she had me do an x-ray anyway.
I asked her about how to exercise without making my back hurt. She gave me the name of a book and she gave me a scrip for a four-visit physical therapy workshop for back patients. I finally can get started on figuring that out.
The doctor reminded me so much of Zooey Deschanel that I grinned at a couple of inappropriate times. I think she saw me once. Maybe she just thought I was wincing from back pain. I go back to see her at the end of July for a little follow-up. That gives me time to figure out the exercise thing…
This is so sad. I’m sorry your back is messed up. “Moderate” degenerative disc disease still sounds awful. It’s cool looking at slices of you, though!
I love Zooey Deschanel! Maybe she got another job to add to actor & singer.
Me too!
To us & Zooey:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bp3UoqOkFJo
I’m disturbed by pictures of your pelvic bones. It seems like some sort of modesty has been breached.
Hehe… sorry. I considered zooming in to just the spine, but it was all blurry and hard to look at.
Oh my goodness…I am soooo jealous of your discs!! They look like nice spongey Twinkies compared to mine. I’ll send you a picture.
Makes me want to go out and get an MRI too.
Ironic: where your patches are dark/black it’s bad news, and in my sinus CT scan, where I should have had black patches all over I did not and that was bad.
Geesh, this must be how we know we’re aging – blog entires for one entire date get filled with X-ray films,stories and other medical issues and concerns.
–off to administer topical analgesics now…