Then Fix It

Last year at this time Dave's back/sciatica started giving him a lot of pain. We were concerned what this would mean for our trip to England in June, so he excellated his visits to professionals. He had been working with a couple physical therapist and a chiropractor, but finally an orthopedist took some images of his back (duh - good idea) and found a herniated disk. Actually, thinking back now I don't think that diagnosis happened until after we came back from England... That was really terrific news because for months no one could really isolate what the cause was and we feared it was MS related and possibly untreatable.

On the ortopedist's advice, and also out of a reluctance to rush into surgery, he has not had any treatment. It has been imaged again, and while the herniation has shrunk, the pain is not any better.

SO: Dave is scheduled for surgery next Thursday. From what the surgeon says, it's the simplest back procedure: a diskectomy. They go in from the back, into the spine, and remove the portion of the disk that is pinching the nerves. If all goes well he'll be out the same day. We discussed some other procedures, disk replacement and fusion, but since Dave's pain is almost entirely in his leg and not in the back, he said those were much more invasive procedures and less applicable for his situation.

He'll be on recovery for at least 6 weeks following that. Fortunately we've recently had some good luck hiring new kennel staff (bad luck too - thankfully the good seems to have outweighed the bad). So he is ever so joyful about getting to be the one to stay in the office to play customer service rep. Not!

Keep your fingers crossed, it would be a long time in coming if he finally gets some relief.