Doctor Updates #1

Well, today (13th) we thought we were going to the doctors just to get the neurologist input into the surgery and if he thought the T1 needed to be fused with the other ones. What we expected going in had no way prepared us for what the outcome was. To make a long story short the neurologist informed Justin that he failed the neurological exam. He had signs of weakness in his left side, tremors, hyper-sensitivity in reflexes and so on and so on. He performed another EMG (Justin’s 3rd one) and sent Justin over for blood work to rule out the normal things they look for : lymes disease, MS, ect. Ect. Then he told Justin to go down and schedule another MRI this time of his neck, spine and brain. However, he was putting in the notes that this was an emergency MRI and that he needed to get it within the next couple of days (remember how long it took to get the last one). Basically the neurologist told Justin that he was thinking that the issues were in his spinal cord or brain. So as you can imagine Justin is freaking out at this point because he had just came to terms with the fusion and what it was going to mean but now to have something completely different be a cause was a little too much for him/us to handle. We were able to get the MRI schedule for the following evening (14th). After the appointment we headed home for a very long couple of days which was only a beginning to a very long week/ couple of weeks of the rollercoaster of emotions that we would have.

The doctor was suppose to call Thursday with updates but didn’t call, he did call Friday only to tell Justin that the MRI’s came back normal and that he, the neurosurgeon, and head tech would be working all day Tuesday (because of the inauguration would be there all day and most of the night) and would come up with some plan as to what and how they would proceed. Okay, some good news: nothing is showing up in his spinal cord, except the compression, narrowing of the spine and spinal disease. The problem is that they decided not to do the brain MRI so they couldn’t rule out the brain. The doctor called Thursday (22nd) and told him that they decided that they were going to go ahead with the fusion as planned because they knew it was needed but they were not certain it would take away all of his pain or does it explain the left side issues. Justin and the doctor decided it would be a good idea to set up another appointment where he would do another EMG but this time on his arm and leg.

We have come to expect the unexpected from the doctor appointments. We think that they are just as confused as us and although we are confused with the unknown we are glad that it is not as of right now as bad as they thought it was a week ago!