I promised this post and others like it some time ago…Life sort of got in the way, as I’m sure many of you can understand.  Anyway, here we go into the next several months of my Journey.  As I said in Part 1, I had been doing great after the 1st surgery until October 2003.  That is when “real” pain started.  As some background…during the prep and discussion with the Neurosurgeon about the first surgery we talked about the next steps if the first one didn’t work.  And I quote “…it is significantly more difficult than this one…the recovery time is months, not weeks!” YIKES!!

SIDE NOTE: The Neurosurgeon was Dr. Steven Cathey.  He works in North Little Rock, AR and (now) does all of his surgery at the Arkansas Surgical Services Center in North Little Rock.  IMHO, Dr. Cathey is one of the best spine surgeons in the region.  There are lots of them in Central Arkansas, but from everything I’ve experienced and heard, I wouldn’t trade him unless he screwed me up!!!  Now, as with all surgeons — and especially with Neurosurgeons — ego is a ever present and noticeable trait. If you don’t respond well to egotism… caveat emptor.  And he’s got a BIG one…but over the years I’ve seen him mellow some.  If there is one person I wanted to have an ego big enough to believe they can fix anything, it’s anyone playing with my spinal column!!!

Okay, so remembering Dr. Cathey’s description of the next option and our mutual agreement that we didn’t want to see each other again (in a good way), I was trying to do ANYTHING/EVERYTHING I could to avoid the fusion.  In November 2003 I had an MRI at Conway Regional Medical Center (CRMC).

The “official” read from the Radiologist at CRMC (more on them later) was nothing impressive, obvious scar tissue from the first surgery and so forth. With that opinion in hand I was thinking well this is not good…once again I was having pain that couldn’t be confirmed on film…so I sort of resigned myself to hopefully getting better and maybe getting a break somehow from the pain…yeah, right!!

SIDE NOTE: The Radiologists at CRMC are not among my favorite places to have a radiological study of any kind read.  I’ve had 4 MRIs & xrays from them and in 3 of the 4 they completely missed what the specialist said was an obvious problem when they viewed the exact same study.  I mean, come one, I realize specialists are trained on specific body parts, but Radiologists are among the highest paid of ALL medical specialists…Why is it that I consistently have had down right wrong interpretations of my studies… I have NO confidence in CRMC’s staff of Radiologists.  However, the CRMC radiology technicians are great and I’ve had very good experiences with other parts of the facility!!

With a “no significant finding to support the patient complaints” sitting in my folder and the strong warning from Dr. Cathey, I settled into my little world not sure of what to do next.  After trying physical therapy, message therapy (which I continue to this day), pain management nothing worked…HOWEVER, Dr. Hart, a pain management doctor did a test called a discography which tests the ability of the disc to withstand differing pressure levels internally.

This is how it works:  The higher the pressure maintained, the “healthier” the disc is presumed to be; or if the disc does not take the pressure or cannot maintain the pressure, there has to be a reason for it…99 times out of 100 it’s a disc ruptured of some degree.  The results of my test showed my disc maintained no pressure at all…that means one and one thing only — I have a complete disc blowout….sort of brings into question the credibility of the CRMC Radiologists, eh?

In early December 2003, armed with all this information I asked Dr. Cathey to take a look at my latest MRI just to see what he thought.   The day I made the request Dr. Cathey was in surgery, so I didn’t expect him to call me back for a day or two. To my surprise he called about 5:00pm that day and said: “…I am sooo sorry about telling you to hold off…I now understand why you are in so much pain…you have a significant right side L4/L5 disc rupture!!!”

There was dancing in the streets and the Church said a resounding “AMEN”…At last, the first official confirmation of my pain…it was bitter sweet.  I was relieved to have someone say “yep this is why you’re hurting so bad”.  At the same time I knew what was coming and it wasn’t going to be a pleasant experience.

In Part 3, I’ll take it up from that point and get through the first weeks after the surgery…please watch for it, it’s a part of the Journey that everyone needs to understand (if you haven’t already been through it).

Now, go find that Happy Place (as long as it’s legal)……..