This post is my way of drawing a line under all of this. I’ll explain what’s wrong with me, and then shut up about it. Really. I promise. <\/p>\n
I have degenerative disc disease. <\/p>\n
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Two of the discs (discs are the padded sacks that go between the bones in your spine) in my lower back are deteriorating. The second-from-bottom one is completely knackered, the bottom one isn’t as bad but is clearly heading down the same path. <\/p>\n
I was shown the MRI scan of my back, and it’s pretty obvious once someone explained what to look for. The rest of the discs show up in the scan image as thick white pads. The bottom two are thin, dark and grey. <\/p>\n
There’s no cure for this, and there’s no way to repair them. <\/p>\n
This is all sounding a bit depressing, isn’t it? Particularly with that fun name of “degenerative disc disease”. <\/p>\n
But there is good news. <\/p>\n
It isn’t ultimately threatening. In other words, it’s not going to shorten my life, and it’s not going to result in paralysis or anything properly scary like that. <\/p>\n
“The term ‘degenerative disc disease’ sounds like a progressive, very threatening condition. However this condition is not strictly degenerative and is not really a disease.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
What is degenerative disc disease?<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n
Medics really suck at naming things, don’t they? <\/p>\n
What is happening to my discs now happens to all of us in old age. It’s a natural result of aging. It kinda sucks that mine are doing this earlier, at a younger age than they should, but I’ve always been an early adopter. <\/p>\n
It’s unlikely to be due to damage that I’ve caused, or the result of injury or illness. I was probably genertically predestined for this. <\/p>\n
Over time, these two discs will continue to deteriorate, until the point where they’re completely gone. The vertebrae either side will end up touching, bone on bone. Over time, they will knit together to form a single larger piece. <\/p>\n
I don’t know how long this will take. It could be weeks or months, it might be a year or more. <\/p>\n
I’ve been offered surgery.<\/strong> <\/p>\n
The degenerating discs are surgically removed, and they put a bone graft in it’s place to manually start the process of fusing the bones together. <\/p>\n
It’s not a fix. It’s essentially a shortcut. It’s doing surgically now what my body is going to do naturally over time. <\/p>\n
In code-monkey terms, I’m thinking of it as a NOOP. If you could jump forward ten years, and compare what I’ll be like if I have the operation vs if I don’t have the operation, there’ll be essentially no difference. <\/p>\n
The benefit is that I get to avoid some pain in the meantime. Because this does really hurt. A lot. It’s really massively fucking painful. It makes me a properly grumpy sod, and makes concentration difficult. Because it hurts. Have I covered the hurting bit enough? \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n
The downside is that the operation isn’t guaranteed to work. For 65% of patients, it’s successful – you get to skip to the end and avoid what could potentially be many months of pain. For 30% of patients, it doesn’t help. For 5% of patients, there are complications that make things worse. <\/p>\n
That’s not the best odds. Find twenty people in my condition. If they all have the operation, one of them will end up regretting it. Eek.<\/p>\n
Plus it’s a major operation. The recovery time is quite long. I’d be unable to return to work for a minimum of six weeks, possibly as long as three months. That would suck. <\/p>\n
The alternative is I just let nature take it’s course.<\/strong> <\/p>\n
It’ll hurt, but I’m told that this will wax and wane as things progress. There will be good weeks and bad weeks. And there are things I can do to manage the pain as this happens: <\/p>\n
Losing some weight – the less weight that my spine has to support, the less pressure that gets put on the joint. So I’ve gotta learn to avoid the vending machines at work!<\/p>\n
Strengthening my core muscles – the more of my weight that my muscles support, the less my spine needs to do. Lots of swimming and stretching and walking. Every day.
\nI hear pilates is good, too. And I could carry on with physio to help build up muscles. <\/p>\nPosture – learning to sit and stand and bend in a way that reduces the load on my lower back. No more slouching<\/a>. And massively reducing the amount of time I spend sitting is important. I’ve switched to a standing desk for work, but I’ll probably write about that another time, as it’s kind of interesting.<\/p>\n
More pain medication. Screw being a hero – bring on the pills. If this process is going to hurt like hell, there are a variety of pills that will help take the edge off, and anti-inflammatories that will help calm things down. <\/p>\n
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