Today I saw my surgeon for my 12 month follow-up. The good news is that the X-rays showed a complete and strong fusion. This made me really happy is that it is possible for fusions to fail to fuse and so hearing that it was complete was a nice relief.
The not-so-good news is that since mid-April I've had a return of pain, a different type of pain and location then pre-surgery. I chalked it up to an unfortunate twist in my back one afternoon as well as frequent weather changes annoying the instrumentation at my fusion site. Today the surgeon did some movement tests and said that with the path of my pain (through side of hip/thigh, wrapped around the top of my leg and stopping at the top of my ankle) it is likely that my sacroiliac joint, which is the joint right below my fusion, is now degenerating. He scheduled an injection test that should be both "therapeutic" and diagnostic---if the injection works and provides pain relief, then my SI joint is degenerating. If there is no relief from my pain, then my SI joint is fine. If I do get pain relief, it could last for a few days or several months.
I do feel discouraged. However, I could live with this degree of pain for a long time and perhaps that will buy me some time for some non-invasive procedures to work. I guess I will know in a couple weeks if this is going to be a long term problem. I knew fusions could create a domino effect both above and below the fusion site, I just didn't think it would happen so fast, particularly at the age of 35.
No comments:
Post a Comment