Date: 2009-02-25
To: Wednesday: "Ok, I have good news, and ...."
Miles today: 0.0

On Wednesday morning I met with my orthopedic surgeon to talk about the results of my MRI. The pictures were fascinating. It seems that several of my disks ¢ those cartilage-type wafers that keep the vertebrae separated from each other ¢ have gone AWOL. That allows the vertebrae to rub together, which is known as arthritis, which turns out to be the origin of that little pain in my back when I first get out of bed in the morning.        It also helps to explain why my pants are getting longer, and why my fifteen year old son is taller than me despite the fact that he is only 6¢ 1¢¢, and I am, and have always been, I¢ll have you know, six feet, two inches tall, IN my stocking feet. Damn.         In addition, several of those vertebrae seem to be a bit annoyed at having been abandoned by the disks, and so are rather mis-shaped and out of alignment. There also seems to be some kind of problem with the amount of fluid that should be filling certain spaces that the spinal cord and the various nerves run through, which would normally result in the nerves getting bent out of shape ¢ both literally and figuratively.         In short, most people with an MRI like mine are suffering from excruciating and debilitating pain, and are not able to stand upright, much less run five miles in under an hour and carry a 35 pound pack up and over mountains. Either we¢d been given the wrong MRI images, or I am a living, breathing tribute to the virtues of denial. The images, of course, had my name at the bottom of each page¢¦.        Ok, so that was the good news. I then asked what he would suggest in terms of: (a) my hike plans, and (b) what could be done to fix the problems.         To be honest, I hadn¢t wanted to even think about the possibility that my back pain ¢ or rather, the cause of that pain ¢ might impact on my hike. I was thrilled, therefore, when he told me that hiking would not harm the situation, and that losing some weight as a result of my hike would actually help ¢ everything else being equal. So, the bottom line is, THE HIKE IS STILL ON!         We then turned to what it would take to fix the various problems with my spine. He showed me an x-ray of another patient of his who had suffered from similar problems and had had back surgery to repair the damage. Against the black shadows of the x-ray, there were all of these super-white rods and pins going every which way, a kind of phosphorescent scaffolding super-imposed on a clearly discernable stack of lumbar vertebrae.         ¢Holy shit¢, I said. ¢How am I supposed to get through airport security with that thing? My titanium knee is already enough to just about guarantee a strip search!¢        ¢With this¢, he said, smiling, ¢You get a body cavity search, too.¢         I asked him when we should plan on doing it. His answer surprised me at first, but made sense the more I thought about it: ¢When you can no longer stand the pain, that¢s when we do it.¢        It turns out not to be a minor operation. Actually, it would be two different sessions of 4-5 hours each. And there are certain risks involved. So he only does it when things are so bad for the patient that the quality of life is bad enough without the surgery to justify those risks. That made sense to me. So, the bottom line is, I just live with whatever pain there may be for now, and worry about what comes later ¢ later. Works for me. ¢Sufficient to the day¢¦.¢        So, it was a kind of a reprieve. Yes, the back is messed up. So what else is new? But it won¢t stop my hike, which is the most important immediate outcome, and I don¢t have to worry about surgery for (hopefully) many years to come. It turns out there was only good news, and more good news.         I headed for the office, where the bad news lay in wait.