F Minus One

GeoTagged, [N43.12721, E76.12784]

This has been a long time coming... I've had back pain for years and years... Chronic for ten but on and off for about fifteen. Pregnancy was the straw that broke this mana's back. Weight gain and balance shifting caused severe sciatic nerve pain, complicated by the fact that they couldn't do much about it until the baby was out due to radiation and med side effect concerns. ("Take some Tylenol." RIGHT.)

I've tried PT, chiropractic, injections, radio frequency ablation and all sorts of "This is the latest thing that is supposed to be a miracle for chronic pain patients" meds. Some of it worked for a while. Most of it was minimally helpful, except straight up pain meds. I've seen at least four doctors for pain management and finally have a caring staff at a pain center. I looked into surgery a few times, but never got any good prognoses, so I've stumbled along doing the best I could.

My husband and son have been really amazing and understanding. And over the next two weeks I will have to ask them to be even more so. Tonight, if all goes as planned, I'll get a call telling me when to show up at the hospital. Tomorrow, I will be in surgery for about thirty minutes. Afterwards, I will have a four inch incision and a lot of pain- its called a foramenotomy and to put it plainly, the doctor is going to go in and shave bonus extra bone off my foramen on both sides. I was really excited that he agreed to do this procedure without feeling the need to also perform a fusion. And I swear that I will work my butt off to build a great core of strength when this is over so I can avoid more surgeries for as long as I can!!

Why a blog? This isn't an UNcommon procedure. But it seems like there's a ton of info and testimonials about other back surgeries... Just not this one. So I hope by keeping a journal, maybe someone else might be a little less frightened going in. I plan to post as much as I can over the next few weeks, even if it's just a few words. Do I look tired? I haven't slept well... But I hope I'm on my way to a better, happier, less painful me. I will mix in updates with past experiences, but for now I want an accurate record of my journey so when someone asks me, "When you... Was it... Did you...?" I'll have an accurate memory of what it was like to share.