Newly Trypanophobic

Yep.

It is what you thought it was.

That's right.

I just posted a photo of my butt.

I have been having serious pain issues with my ankle. The consensus of late is that it is nerve pain emanating from damage in my spine. When I 14, I had surgery to correct scoliosis. My spine was fused with metal rods and bone chips from T10 to L4

Twenty (!) years on, I am having some pain issues. I can't explain my pain accurately because I can't really feel where it starts. Just that my ankle hurts. Bad. So I was scheduled for a CT to see what was up, but nothing could be seen around all the metal in my back. So then I was scheduled for a CT Myelogram. That is a regular CT after having dye spinally injected.

Dye made with shellfish.

Shellfish to which I am extremely allergic.

Yeah, it isn't as fun as it sounds.

The results said I had multiple levoscoliosis status from T10 to L4. Severe degenerative disc disease at L4-L5 with buckling of the ligamentum flavum and severe bilateral facet arthropathy resulting in severe spinal canal stenosis, severe left neural foramen stenosis at L4-L5, severe bilateral neural foramina stenosis at L5-S1 ... blah blah blah.

Basically, everything not fused is twisted and smushed and pinched and arthritic.

YAY for me!

My surgeon said damage is really not unexpected, but he did not expect damage to that extent. He then offered me two solutions or, rather, suggestions/ Surgery to further fuse my spine or epidural steroid shots.

Hmmm. Let me think ... shots it is.

I went in when scheduled, got up on the table ... let me interject that laying flat on my tummy is very uncomfortable for me. I was told that they would place the needle in, then some dye to make sure they were in the right spot, then inject some saline and finally the steroid. 5 minutes at most.

Riiiight.

They gave me some numbing stuff but it didn't work and I spent the next 32 minutes staring at the clock, counting needle jabs, singing Gary Allan songs in my head and crying silently. At 32 minutes in, there was a particularly painful jab and I let out an audible sob.

Three voices asked me how I was. I said "I'm okay." Which was a lie, but I just wanted them to get done. The only other female asked if my pain level was okay. Choking back more sobs, I said "It's not pleasant." Not exactly a lie. Through dome more questioning, we (they) deduced that the numbing injectionS had worn off.

Ya think?

When a procedure supposed to take 5 minutes lasts well over 6 times that long? Wow, it's almost like they went to medical school.

I finally got done -- it them 54 minutes of jabbing to find a spot and 2 minutes to do everything else -- and I was so very sore. I told the mother that I stopped counting at jab 22. She thought I was exaggerating until she got to jab 26. Those red dots in the photo are needle punctures and neither of us could tell when they hit they hit the same spot 2, 3 or even 4 times.

I will live with the pain from now on, I may end up self-amputating, but I cannot go through the shots again.

Nope. No way. Unh-uh, Forget it.