Medical Drama

So - here is what has been going on with me medically over the past couple of weeks. I've been having tingling in my legs and pretty awful back pain. Last Sunday night while watching a movie the tingling zipped up my entire right side two times and when it started the 3rd time we decided that I should go to the ER to be looked at. It was 10pm. Ugh. Dakota stayed with the sleeping children and her sister and brother in-law took me over to the hospital. Four hours and a complete stroke work up later (even though I kept insisting that it had to come from my back), I was released with instructions to see a neurologist within the week. The and tingling had settled back down and returned to my legs.

Monday went well enough with the tingling and pain remaining in my legs and back. The tingling would all but disappear when I was moving around. I was thinking herniated disk or something. Logical assumption as I've been having new back pain in the middle of my back since October and was even seen in November for it when it got to the point where sitting hurt too much. I was told I didn't need an x-ray, given a brochure on exercises and a prescription for pain medication. I took the pain meds at night but they never really helped.

Monday night I was waking often to find my legs were tingling. Tuesday morning my legs tingled (much more intensely then before) even after moving around for an hour so I called the neuro office I had made an appointment with (for Jan 31st as no one had openings for this past week) to see if someone could see me soon (she found an opening on Friday and I booked that). As I was talking on the phone, my arms started to tingle. The nurse suggested I go to the ER room which Dakota agreed with.

We found someone to take Kelton to school and pick him up again, someone to stay with Kaylen (Grandma came to the rescue) and a friend to drive me to the ER (Thanks Sheri!) all while trying to not panic because well - you know our heads went to worst case scenario. Things was all changing so quickly! Dakota left her job and met me at the ER where we spent the rest of the day.

The upshot of the visit was the on-call neuro was the guy I had been scheduled to see so he went ahead and ordered the MRI that he would have ordered after seeing me anyway. Great - we'll be ahead of the game for the Friday appointment.

I couldn't take the stress of not knowing what, if anything, the scan showed so Wednesday afternoon I called the office insisting I be told *something*. I just had to know because we were so afraid it was going to be something bad.

No tumor. No words ever sounded sweeter to me. The nurse (who was relaying the message from the doc) said that there is, however, a syrinx which explains the symptoms. I asked what that was and she replied that she really didn't know. I asked her to spell it for me and after hanging up I hit the good ol' Google and called Dakota while I waited for pages to load. We both Googled from our computers sharing info as we read.

A syrinx (aka: syringomyelia) is a fluid filled cyst that is inside the spinal column and it puts pressure on the nerves.

Upon meeting with the neurologist yesterday (who we both really liked!) we were reassured that it is most likely a result of the trauma sustained when I broke my back 11 years ago. It is putting pressure on nerves causing the numbness and tingling I am currently experiencing as well as other medical symptoms I have been experiencing since last summer - including the side pain that I had thought was my gall bladder. Relatively speaking, it is small and since it isn't causing significant neurological problems we are adopting the wait and carefully watch approach (if it gets to the point of causing problems neurologically, then surgery would be necessary).

Hopefully this is just a flare up and things will settle back down. To be sure there are no other contributing factors, I will have another MRI study done next week (in an open MRI - thank goodness!) and then we will probably meet with a neurosurgeon for a second opinion (which was the neurologists suggestion). Providing nothing surprising shows up, I will follow up with the neuro doc in a few weeks, then a few weeks after that, then a couple months after that and so on until we only check in every year. We'll cross the bridge with what to do about the numbness and tingling if it doesn't resolve on its own at a later point.

So - all in all - this is really, really good news. The tingling and pain suck but given the alternative - I'll take it AND I feel vindicated about the stuff that has been happening in my body for almost a year. Once the pieces of the puzzle started coming together Dakota and I were able to ask "What about this thing? What about that one?" and the doc shook his head and said "All related."

All related. Somehow just knowing that gives me great peace of mind.

So - now we know and now we can deal with it.

It's been an exhausting week around here but I think it's fair to say we all slept better last night. :)