Herniated Discs (If only it were an April Fool's joke)

So I went to see the back specialist finally. Four weeks after I started having leg pain and two weeks after going to the general practitioner at the Student Health Center. I had really tweaked something the morning I went to the Student Health Center, guess maybe I should have stopped playing raquetball a little earlier. Dr. Nielson at the SHC had me get an MRI the next day, and after the report came back of two herniated discs, he made arrangements for me to see the back specialists. I waited two weeks and finally got in to see the nurse practitioner (the main doctors are booked for new patients until August!). He looked at my information, asked a couple of questions, pulled my MRI films out and said, "Well, you have a really bad herniated disc and really really bad herniated disc." Then he started explaining things to me. 

Here is a picture of my spine looking down on a slice of it as if you were looking down a pipe. The little group of dots that the red arrow is pointing to are the nerves running down the spine. The light gray triangular oval they are in is what is called the thecal sac. The large dark gray circle above that is a spine bone and the discs are the same shape normally. This first picture shows the shape of all these things as they should be.

This second image shows the really bad herniated disc. The dark circle is pushing out on the thecal sac (red circle) and the nerves (red arrow) get pinched.

The third image is of the really really bad herniated disc. Between the two of these guys my nerves are pinched enough to cause my leg to hurt and my foot to be numb. He told me that I should schedule surgery, the earliest day being April 14th. He gave me a website to get more info from and said to go home and think about it. He told me that as bad as they are they probably won't go away on their own. Over the past two weeks I am feeling like the symptoms are going away more and more each day. The information he pointed me to said it takes 4 to 6 weeks for a herniated disc to be "resorbed", as it is called. I talked to him today on the phone again and he said if I am feeling better we will wait six weeks and talk again. If my choice is between potential permanent nerve damage and surgery, I will take surgery, but if I can get better and they will go away on their own, that is what I opt for. The surgery doesn't fix things so that they won't herniate again, in fact it increases the probability, it just treats the symptoms and relieves the pressure on the nerves. So if my symptoms are going away, do I still get surgery? This is definitely part of my prayers right now.

No new posts?

Just letting you know that if you check this blog regularly and there are never any new posts it probably because I've been doing most of our posting on my regular blog. It seems like I've been posting on there there most lately. So if you want to check out what's going on in our lives check out my personal blog if nothing is showing up here!

http://shalaeastletippetts.blogspot.com/

A year ago... or four

What were we doing a year from now? I didn't take many pictures in January last year it seems, but here is one of us working on an art project in the kitchen together. I was taking an online class, and the girls were helping me out. Mirian's hair seems so long. What happened? How did it get shorter?

Isaac is just learning how to walk and run around, and now look at him. The kid can't be stopped, he doesn't have a walk, he just has a slow jog for everything! We were in our old apartment, not even comprehending that in six months we'd have our own house. Circumstances can change like that.

But to really see how fast life changes, look at savannah 4 years ago. Is she just not the cutest kid in the world?! She's getting ready to have her first sibling join the family in a couple of months, full of smiles, curly hair and cuteness. They grow up so fast! Faster than I would like.

Poor Girl

Her and Isaac were having a great time twirling each other around and break neck speed on the rocking chair. Well she decided to stand up and leaned too far tipping the chair over. She went flying and smashed her nose into the bookcase. It immediately turned black and blue, swelled up and bled a little bit.


I wasn't sure whether to take her to the doctor since the last time I went in for another nose incident with Savannah the doctor told me it was really hard for young kids to break their noses, since the bridge is so small and the cartilage is so loose too. So we're giving it a day to see if the swelling goes down. She didn't seem to have much pain when touching it, and we'll see if she can breathe better out of it tomorrow morning. Until now, it just looks nasty!