Disc Go

It's been over a week and a half since my emergency, emergency-room trip. (Which of course alerted my primary care provider to the immediate and direct putting of me, straight away, first on the list of people who need prompt attention.) (Yeah, right.)
(Hence the recent obligatory days and days and days of referral system and appointment making negotiations.)


Yesterday I finally saw my spinal pain management doctor (a week after the MRI, in turn about four days after the notorious brush-in with Wretched Room Clearer-Outer at my emergency room dismissal).


First, --regarding the MRI, I absolutely have not perfected the art of Valium taking.

The last two times I've gone for a MRI with Valium pills a go-go, but I can't seem to time the taking of them correctly -- somehow only getting loopy, high, and sleepy when trying to eat in public, post-procedure, during what I like to call my 'Whoopee-My-MRI-Is-Done' celebration.
I try shoving restaurant burgers through the pores on my chin, sit next to strange men instead of Hubby, and pour salad dressing in my purse. Being high is not all it's cracked up to be if you can't even time the mental escape of one, thirty minute "slip-into-this-metal-sock-coffin" nightmare.

And you know, maybe I would give up dieting - if by some heavenly blessing it would mean being informed, 'I'm sorry, fatso . . I mean Ma'am! --we can't possibly stuff you into our MRI contraption without the snug fit of the machine ripping the skin from your body, like the scaling of a fish. We'll have to artist sketch what we think your discs are doing instead, by your imaginative description.'

As it is now, I have, oh, I'd say, --an entire 1/8 of an inch full-breathing room space around me during imaging. "Um yes, Ma'am? --Please try to hold still!"

'Oh, ya-think, Einstein?? Are the microscopic hair follicles on my forehead banging too heavily against the metal-hell surrounding me? 


~~~~~~
Anyhoooo. Forget that horror.

Spinal pain management Dr. V., I like alright. He's never been able to help me too much, but seems to want to try.

He changed offices since last I saw him, and while I lingered in the waiting room yesterday, I searched for a magazine to keep my mind off the pain.
Apparently spinal injury at the new office is very manly business, because there was not a single sheet of fem-verse'd magazines to be found! Examples forthcoming:

Men and Beer
Men and Caves
Men and Couches
All Men, All the Time
Remote Control Weekly
Spine Pain Is For Wusses
Shopping is For Wusses
Everything But What Men Like is For Wusses
Tools, Machines, and Lakes
Ice Cream for Big Boys
What Happens in Best Buy, Stays in Best Buy
All Pictures, No Words
Rockets, Trucks, Boats, Cars, Lawn Mowers, Doorbells, and Can Openers


I don't know if Dr. V. just went through a bad divorce, --or if the guy's got mommie-issues picking up speed . . but I was called back to his office just in the nick-of-time, before my brain started spilling out of my body faster than my discs were.

Since all x-ray and MRI film looks the same to me--like I'm about to have another baby, or am the proud owner of super big cavities--it was good to have Doc point out the details on the film to me.

The first thing I learned--that I never knew before--was that I have small pedicles.

Those, you may be interested to learn, are a little part of the vertebra. Bone that extends from the vertebral body.
It'd be better if mine weren't so small, because they'd help to keep all that tender disc-mush from wanting to pop out of place so ~~ but there's nothing I can do about that. It's genetic.
(Yeah, thanks Mom and Dad. First hairy knuckles and saddlebags, --and now this?!)


"Small, huh?" I asked.

"Yes," answered Dr. V.

"Would you mind then, if we called them 'petite'? Petite pedicles?" I petitioned. "I've . . it's just. . . . There's never, really, been anything 'petite,' on my body before. So I'm just kind of pleased about that."

"Uh, okay," he agreed. "Petite, then." Which of course made me blush. (No ones ever said that to me before.)


The second thing I learned, is it looks like surgery for me.
Which, surprisingly, wasn't such a bad thing to hear, --the way Doc put it. I mean, I know surgery isn't great . . plus it means of course, I've got that whole upside-down, while unconscious, buck-naked, spread-eagle, and people looking and poking at me kind of thing to not look forward to . . . but whatever.   He does think I will be relieved of my pain.



Heck.
Let's talk about something more pleasant.
One good thing I suppose, about this whole hoopla, is that I have for once and for all,
finally learned how to spell 'vertebra' correctly. I've always wanted to spell it v-e-r-t-e-b-r-a, but second guess myself because of the whole 'bra' bit.
Why bra?
And why is it pronounced 'bray' in verte-'bra' - when it clearly spells 'bra'? And than, why not vertebrassiere, if it's no matter, you know?

I tell you, those ancient Indo-European family languages, crack me up.  Probably, that's why priests during Mass don't like to read out loud the Latin stuff as much as they used to. It's hard for them to keep from giggling at the silly words.
Ah, forget it.
Forget I brought the priests into this.

Let's just stick with the part that ~~'I have Petite Pedicles,' okay?

Man how I wish they made jeans for pedicles.