Back surgery #3

First, thank you to all of you who have sent all of their well wishes to me via my mom. I really appreciate it. I wanted to update you/explain what was going on with my back.

About a month ago I turned over in bed and felt a pop in my back. It hurt for a couple of days and then while I was in Israel it felt better, in fact it didn't bother me at all for about 2 weeks. Just before we came home from Israel it started hurting again and has progressively getting worse. I went swimming with my family on the 4th, hoping that would make it feel better, which it did while I was in the water, but it started hurting worse after the fact and when I got a shower afterwards and went to shave my legs, my shin was numb. l couldn't feel the razor. I rode with Molly to pick up my parents for the 4th of July party at Janices, and the pain got so bad in my back and hip that I couldn't sit and by the time we got there I had tears streaming down my face. I laid on my parents bed with some ice packs and sent them off to the party to see if I'd get feeling better. I wasn't so my parents came home from the party and we spend the rest of the 4th in the ER (We did get to see some of the Stadium of Fire fireworks from the waiting room since we spent 2 hours there).

Right now, when I am standing or laying down I am the most comfortable. Sitting is very difficult for me. When I sit it sends an intense achy feeling into my hip and it makes all of the muscles in my left leg go into muscle spasms/cramps. It's like getting a calf cramp but in every muscle in my leg at the same time....quads, hamstrings, adductors and calf muscles. The inside of my shin also stings and feels like a have a really bad sunburn on it and that is combined with the numbness to the touch. It's quite the contradictory sensations. The medications the doctor game me are helping much more today so hopefully that will continue to improve.

Long story short, I was seen by the doctor, he did some sensation tests and strength tests on me and pain tests and decided that I needed an MRI which required calling the staff in. They gave me pain killers through an IV and also when I had the MRI they did a contrast through the IV as well. Finally the doctor came in and told me that I had a disc herniation at L3-4, a level higher than where I had my last surgery (for those of you who don't know I've already had back surgery twice) and it needs surgery soon, although he didn't feel that it needed to happen that night. He sent me home with a prescription for some pain killers and a steroid to control the inflammation, and a referral to Dr. Reichman.

I had originally scheduled an appointment with Dr. Peterson, my neurosurgeon, and Dr. Reichman, the neurosurgeon down here in Utah County. The reason I had done both was that if I could wait a little longer, without permanent neurological damage, I wanted Dr. Peterson to perform the surgery since he knows my medical history. The problem is that he's out of the state until the 15th. I saw Dr. Reichman today and he was able to do the surgery on the 15th and one of the other issue that I have is that school is starting in a month and a half and I have all of my sports starting in less than a month so I need recovery time to be sooner rather than later.

I decided to do the surgery on the 15th with Dr. Reichman rather than waiting for Dr. Peterson. He is planning on doing a fusion right now because he is concerned that the vertebrae are shifting on each other and deteriorating quickly. If he gets in there and the vertebrae are stable then he'll just do the discectomy.