Well, I finally finished the shlanket. Yes, the shlanket. It’s done. It exists. It is enormous and wonderful and getting a decent photo of it was an absolute nightmare because apparently blankets the size of a small country don’t exactly cooperate with casual photo shoots. So please excuse the towels folded on the couch and the fact that I am absolutely in my pajamas. This is a judgment free zone and honestly if you expected anything else from me, that’s on you.

Moving on, I got my latest MRI results back and wow, the radiologist really said let me ruin your whole day in one paragraph. In human words, what this basically means is that the L5S1 disc in my spine is breaking down and drying out, which is causing inflammation and irritation in the surrounding bones and tissue. On top of that, the little joints along my spine are arthritic, and there’s a buildup of bone and disc material pressing on the nerves on both sides of my spine where they exit through the gaps in the vertebrae. There is also some blood in the disc area that was not there in December. My uneducated guess is either an annular tear or herniated due to the advanced decrease in the disc height compared to the last two MRIs. I have bulging discs in two other discs as well as the facet arthropathy in all of the discs, which means they will most likely end up doing the same thing as L5 eventually. So in short, my spine is staging a full protest and has been for a while. Yay me.

Here is something I genuinely did not see coming though. The Gabapentin is actually working on the sciatica. Like, working working. I am honestly shocked at how much of my pain was nerve related this whole time. It turns out a significant chunk of what I thought was just my baseline existence was actually nerve pain doing its little villain arc. The remaining pain seems to be arthritis and disc related, which, fine, at least now we know what we are dealing with. Still waiting to hear from my spine surgeon.

In the win column, I have been doing small tasks lately and I am choosing to celebrate every single one of them. I cut vegetables for dinner. I made a box of brownies from scratch, well, from a box, but I did the steps. Did it take two hours because I had to stop and rest every five minutes and was completely wrecked afterward? Absolutely yes. Do I care? Absolutely not. Something got made and I was the one who made it and that counts.

And finally, the thing I still cannot fully believe. Twenty six days without a migraine. Twenty six. I don’t even know what to do with that information. The Gabapentin is still knocking me flat after the second dose every day and I am basically a sleepy little gremlin by evening, but apparently that is just the price of admission for now. I am told I will get used to it eventually and I am choosing to believe that with my whole entire heart.

Side note, I’m going to speak to my GP about getting tested for hEDS. My daughter (she’s a nurse) sent me a checklist that the doctors supposedly use but is available online to download. I not only can do most of the things in the pictures (except palms on the floor, bad back, I would die. But can do the other 4.) I have dislocated my right knee eight times and ended up having surgery on it and was recently told I’ll most likely need surgery again. I have the prolapse, the dental crowding and high narrow palate (had 4 teeth pulled when I was 15 and had to get braces, they were growing in behind/above my other teeth because there was no room.) I also have had multiple abdominal hernias, chronic unexplained fatigue, and gastrointestinal issues. I’ve often said, how can I have so many different ailments that it’s always something hurting. I felt like a hypochondriac at times. The “double jointed” as we called it back in the day, never bothered me, except hyperextending my knees. I could never stand in one spot for very long and thanks to the damage from dislocating so many times, standing with slightly bent was out of the question. But the rest, bending my thumb down to my forearm, crossing my middle finger over my pointer finger, then crossing my ring finger over the middle and then the pinky, they were just stupid party tricks. 

I’ve rambled on and probably shared TMI but hey, we’re all friends here, right?

Deanna

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