We have some catching up to do...

I completely and totally fell off the bandwagon with this whole blog thing.

The other day my mom was sitting on the computer and I was sitting on the couch moaning about my life and she said, "You know what I don't like? When someone starts a blog and then totally abandons it." Point taken. Thank you, Mother.

Now, if you haven't been following my life story, first of all, why haven't you been? I'm only the most fascinating person in the world. Right! But if you haven't, you might be wondering what I'm talking about how my mom and I were having a conversation face to face. Because I'm in Chicago and she's in Spotswood, right? RIGHT?? Wrong. :(

I believe my last blog was about the terrible back problems I've been having. and how my mom found a spine surgery place that might be able to do the surgery and what would I do, etc. well turns out YES, they can do the surgery. YES, they believe they can totally fix my back up. YES, I have to have it done ASAP. Unfortunately that meant I had to leave my precious Chicago behind for this semester and get myself all taken care of before hopefully going back in the spring. Yes, I said hopefully. We'll cross that bridge when we get to it.


(I took this. It's a bridge. ;)).

In the meantime, my surgery is scheduled for this Thursday, November 3, 2011. (side note: November 3 is a traditionally sucky day for me, so I'm not surprised that this is the date my surgery was scheduled for). It's happening at the Laser Spine Institute in Philadelphia. I am going to be using my Blog to keep track of my recovery, etc. I decided to do this because I am absolutely bugging out about this surgery. It seems that at this place everyone either has a brilliant experience and their lives are better than ever or they have a miserable experience and are back at square one. "Why would you risk that?" you might ask. Well, let me explain that to you.

The odds are very much in my favor. This is a very straight forward laser surgery that they're doing on my back. The objective is clear, what needs to be done is clear, etc. I am very young, one of their youngest patients, and I have only had back problems for about a year. Because of this, my ability to heal is much greater than that of the 90 year old who has been dealing with her back problems for 56 years. The surgery itself is very common. I have Spinal Stenosis, which is THEE surgery that they do at this place. They do other surgeries too, but this is their money maker, so to speak. So when you wrap all of this up, odds are that I will benefit greatly from this surgery.

On the off chance that it's not successful, here is how I'm justifying it to myself: They can't screw up. They can't make my back any worse than it already is. If it doesn't work, at least I'll know that I tried with the most minimally invasive option that was presented to me, and if it's not successful then I can go on to the next one. I see no reason to begin with drastic measures such as open back surgery when a thing like this is out there for this specific back problem.

So I'll be keeping track of this experience either to ease the minds of people who are nervous about having surgery done at LSI, or to tell people stay the HELL away from LSI. We'll see what the conclusion is as we go through this!!

Right now, I'm staying over my aunt's house. Tomorrow I head into Philadelphia for my pre-op evaluation. I have no idea what to expect, so we'll see what happens. I'm just praying to GOD (literally. I'm serious. Praying), that they won't have to tell me that I am for some reason ineligable for the surgery. I definitely shouldn't be. They've already reviewed the MRI, all blood work came back normal and I have no health problems. But I've been known to have balls come out of left field in my life so I'm putting it out there that that is a possibility. We'll see what happens!!!

I'd be lying if I said I'm not scared to death, but my life has been so drastically affected by this that it is well worth the risk and the fear. I'm just praying that it'll be worth it.

Some people should not reproduce

and the results of the MRI I had done on my back say that my parents are two of them.

I'm kidding, obviously, because if they hadn't reproduced then the world wouldn't have me, and that would be tragic. but my genetics do leave a lot to be desired. The latest manifestation of their awesomeness is in my spine. I briefly mentioned that I've been having some back problems. I didn't go into detail because, really, everyone in this world has their own problems and who wants to read about mine? Then I realized two things: 1. this is a blog about my life. obviously if you're reading it you have to be remotely interested in what's going on (God bless you!). and 2. Have you ever heard of schadenfreude? It is a beautiful German word (there's an oxymoron! (I'm kidding. I love German. Hi Frau Altmiller!!)) that literally means "Pleasure or happiness at the misfortune of others." There is probably some aspect of your life that sucks. That's not a diss on your life, that's just a fact of it - everyone's life sucks a little bit. Maybe reading about my problems will help you forget about your own for a little bit, or something like that. Really I'm just trying to justify to myself why I'm talking about myself constantly. That's the problem with blogs, they cater to people like me who sometimes really like to talk about their own life. I'm sorry!

So back to the back pain (do you see what I did there?), for about a year, every couple months I would have a week or two of extreme discomfort (but not necessarily pain) in my lower back. About 2 months ago it started again, but this time it was crippling, and it didn't get better - it just got worse. So I sucked it up and decided to consult a chiropractor about 4 weeks ago, which I really recommend. I've been seeing a chiropractor since I was 2 months old. They are heaven sent! My chiropractor has been doing some physical and manual therapy combined with electric stim on my back, and there was no improvement at all and my back was just getting worse, in addition to the fact that there was now pain shooting down both of my legs and I couldn't move without feeling like I was being stabbed.

SO doc sent me for an MRI. That was enough of an experience itself. I'm not a claustrophobic person, but I think everyone becomes claustrophobic when it comes to MRIs. The woman on the phone asked me if I was claustrophobic and I decided to say yes to see what happened. Nothing happened. The only thing that got me was now these people knew that I was going to be freaking out while I was stuffed in this tube for half an hour with jackhammers banging all around me. Have you ever noticed how people who give MRIs are always like really sweet and nice, etc.? It's because they can get their evil, sadistic ways out of their systems by knowing how much they're really torturing you.

This is the result of said MRI:

Two things with this. First, I'm not a doctor, I don't even play one on TV. but even I can tell that there is something going on there in those shady spots, especially that one shady spot where it's really sticking out on the side. Someone who actually is a doctor, and maybe they even play one on TV, looked at this and got the following information:

My genes suck.

More specifically, I was born with a wonderful little thing called "Congenital Canal Stenosis" of the lumbar spine. Meaning, basically, that the spinal cord narrows as it goes down to the bottom. This is resulting in nerve damage, bulging discs, compression of all kinds of things and a bunch of other problems that I don't even understand. There was a lot of head nodding and smiling as all of this was explained to me. But what it comes down to is that I was born with this 'issue' and I was told that there's no way to treat/cure it, but rather 'manage' it. The doctor informed me that through continuing the therapy and consulting a neurologist they should be able to get me out of pain and try to make sure that the pain does not come back, at least to this magnitude.

I was all down on myself thinking that I was going to be crippled for life. I don't think there's  much room in the musical theatre industry for people with major back problems. But then I got a phone call from my mom! She found a spine center (place thing...) and they do a non-invasive laser surgery to repair stenosis of the spine! HEY, that's what I have!!! I faxed a copy of my MRI results over to them, and in the next few days they will be contacting me to let me know if the surgery would help my problem and if I'm eligable for it. I'm trying not to get my hopes up too much, but it sure would be nice.

Then comes the decision of how and where to get this surgery done...