runner's surgery blog, L4/5, 2008

[runner]

What is going on with the spine?

Seems appropriate enough of a title. Or What isn't going on with my spine?

The CT myelogram still had artifact at L4/5 and L5/S1. So now I get the picture that even with the myelogram, you are still going to have some artifact on the images.
The guy who did the test used in the report the words, as far as can be determined there was no...

Anyway, it did not show what I thought it would show. But I am not convinced that I cannot do anything for the L5/S1 level, yet. I asked my doctor if I could still have something that was hidden by the artifact and he said, "Yes".
He suggested going to get another EMG/NCS test to see if the pain/symptoms were coming from a peripheral source rather than the lumbar area.

It is all coming from the back according to the neurologist I saw. I have all kinds of funky nerves and some got a little better from when I had an EMG/NCS a year ago and some got worse. The gist of it is:

1. The electrodiagnostic study reveals evidence of moderate subacute-chronic left L5-S1 radiculopathy.

2. The electrodiagnsotic study reveals evidence of mild chronic right L5-S1 radiculopathy.

So one doctor thinks that there is nothing pressing on my nerves, although the neurologist said a year ago that I had a "pinched nerve" at L5-S1. I asked him what happened with the pinched nerve and he told me it must not be pinched now. In the absence of no treatment, I find it kind of hard to believe that I do not have a pinched nerve.

So I thought, well, I really need to speak to the neurologist in person and I went ahead and made an appointment for the end of this month, the first available that I could get.

All this is not exactly want I envisioned when I got my ADRs and for that matter, when I had fusion at C5-6 and C6-7 and have ended up with Heterotopic Ossification. ("kissing osteophytes").

R