Days 80 - 83

Feeling a little down in the dumps today.

Had an appointment yesterday to discuss whether surgery would be an option for my back.

Turns out the answer to that is pretty much no.

Waiting on a second opinion from the Neurosurgeon after he reviews my scans, but the general consensus is that the problem with my back lies within the discs themselves not through nerve damage.

And because they don't think the nerves are being squished, the only way to 'fix' things would be spinal fusion surgery. And that is apparently just as likely to make an even bigger mess of my back so it's a no-go.

It's just kind of depressing because I've essentially just got to live with it. The suggestions are to ease back into everything that hurts, like sitting, walking, standing, doing everything, over a gradual course of months. She said even something like sitting - the recommendation is to do it for no more than 10 minutes a few times a day. After that ten minutes doesn't hurt anymore then build up to double that or something....

And they can't say this will make me feel great, just that I won't get the cycle of 'doing nothing gets too much, so then I do too much when makes the problem worse than it was, so then I do nothing and repeat.'

Anyway ... there isn't anything I can do about it so I guess it's just down to me to accept that I will forever have a level of pain that makes functioning at a level I want a hard task.

I'm not sure what this means going forward, except that right now it feels like I will always be in pain and always need medication. And that's a hard thing to accept. It's kind of weird to me that in this day and age we can cure so much but we can't fix this kind of thing and you get told over and over, that there is nothing that can be done....

To me that says that I may as well do what I want because I can't change the pain regardless. Why bother modifying things if it's going to hurt anyway? May as well just get things done and deal with the debilitation after.

Sorry for the moping. I will be back to myself soon enough I'm sure.