an update on me

Hi everyone, I haven't been making it on the boards as much lately because I have been busy at work and just exhausted.

Things are at sort of a standstill treatment-wise. I saw my PM and asked him to run labs and take x-rays. The labs came back normal, but he never let me know anything about the x-rays. I got the x-ray report from the PT and it was quite shocking in my non-medically informed opinion. Moderate degenerative disk disease at L5-S1, mild DDD at other levels, facet joint arthritis, and SI joint arthritis. The PT reassured me that most of this is in the realm of "normal" for a very active person except the moderate DDD. The funny thing is we know my pain is coming from the SI joint and not from the lumbar disks.

All that arthritis has me pretty worried I have something else going on. I'm only 31 - that just seems like a lot of degenerative changes for someone my age. I am going to get a second opinion from my colleague, but I still need to set that appointment up.

In the meantime I'm doing PT again. The goal is not really pain reduction, just restoring the function that I've lost over the past year so that I can be more active again. My assessment was pretty bad - I'm very weak and inflexible in my whole lower body. I also was prescribed Lidoderm and it is happily helping quite a bit.

So that's where I'm at. I hope the second opinion doctor will at least give me more explanation than my regular PM, because right now I just feel confused and don't know what my options are other than more PT.

Thanks White Beard. I am really hoping I'll gain some strength - I just need so much help these days! I'm very lucky that my partner is very patient and understanding.