6.5 months post op

My low back is good - it really only hurts with weather changes so this hurricane season has been tough or too much activity. Its not a constant pain anymore. I continue to core strenghten which is helping. Its going to rain tomorrow so I do feel it a bit now but nothing like pre-surgery. In fact this weekend was great weather and I never felt it at all. Maybe we should relocate somewhere that has no pressure changes.

My neck pain has continued to be terrible. I am having an awful time with the doctors. I had a facet block injection which did not work and in fact caused me to have severe spasms down my right shoulder. At the follow up appt the doctor said he was "at a loss" and offered my nothing but drugs. I refused to accept that option, ended up in a fight with him and am now seeing another doctor in the practice. I am in the process of dealing with the politics of that. New doc wants to do another set of injections which I don't want since the first ones actually caused me to be worse off. But in order to get to the next set of testing one must be a compliant patient and follow protocol. So we'll see where I get with this - no answers yet.

I had the German doctor look at my films and he agrees that they don't inherently look bad enough to perform surgery. However, he understands that given my history my pain is real. I need a cervical discogram done which could confirm my pain level. However, due the somewhat unreliable nature of the test and more to the risk of becoming quadripalegic with this test (2 in 1000 according to one doc) it is tough to get a doctor to perform this test without going through the above protocol.

So in the meantime I continue to be in awe that this has become my life......