2 Bit Hacker

One more reason not to be doing any more long road trips: herniated disc. You may remember about 3 years ago I suffered from a herniated disc in my lower back which put pressure on a nerve to my left leg causing pain when walking or sitting. It ended up putting me in bed for about a month while the disc material was absorbed. Well, after my road trip to Ohio the disc herniated again. Not as bad this time, thankfully, but it still knocked me out of work for 2 and a half weeks, just returning to work today. No longer really painful, but at this point the left side of my left leg feels numb, as if it’s gone to sleep.

I’m just glad that it got better in time for the holidays. And it serves as a reminder that I really need to lose weight, or this’ll just keep happening.

Just got back from my EMG test. That was not a very fun experience. The test consists of two parts. Part one involved zapping you in various places, causing your muscles to twitch (sometimes kindof painfully, depending on the muscle) so they can measure the response time. The second part involves jamming needles into various parts of you, in my case 3 in the back, two in the back of the leg, and one in the front, for some reason I haven’t quite figured out yet. At any rate, it’s not pleasant. At least I couldn’t see the needles going into by lower back. According to Delia they went in about an inch.

Anyway, the test showed that I have some nerve damage, and apparently some of it’s new and some of it’s old, so my back condition has probably been around for a while. Other than that, it just narrowed it down to the same disc that we already knew was the problem, thanks to the (painless!) MRI earlier in the month.

Oh, and yesterday I met with an orthopedic spine surgeon, who looked at my MRI and Xrays and said I basically have three options. I can do nothing, and hope it just fixes itself. I can do physical therapy, which should help it heal itself faster. And thirdly, I can go in for surgery and they’ll remove the part of the disc that sticking out, which should fix everything. Since it seems to be getting better on it’s own, I decided to go with option two. I’ll be starting physical therapy next Monday, and meeting back with the surgeon next month. I figure if I make good progress, then everything’s good. If it’s not going well, I can opt for the surgery.

So that’s pretty much it. I’m kindof ouchy at the moment, and I keep getting little pricky pains where the needles were. It’s annoying. I’m glad Delia was with me though, so I could crush her hand when the doc shoved the needles in. Thank you, dear.

Finally back at work for the first time since my back started hurting. It felt good to get out of the apartment under my own power for a while, though I don’t feel like I really got much done. Sitting in a chair still hurts after a while, so I had to keep lying on the floor till my back stopped hurting. I figure it’s probably good for me though. I hope by the end of the week I’ll be able to sit mostly normally.

Also, I think I’ve been spending way too much time on my laptop, as it’s now easier to type on this keyboard than the one I used to use at work. Not sure if that’s a good thing or not…

I was planning on writing up a description of our trip to Hampton, but Delia has already beaten me to it. I had a good time, did a lot of wandering around and playing arcade games, had some good seafood for dinner. I’m a little disappointed that we spent a day at the beach without every actually going onto the sand, but it should make a good excuse for me to drag her back out there sometime this summer.

Other than that, not a lot going on at the moment. My leg has been bothering me more in the past week, I’m thinking I should probably go see a doctor about it, but that means I need to figure out my insurance info so I know which doctor to go to without having to pay huge sums of money for it. I’m still thinking it’s a tendon problem, but I have no idea how long it should take to heal.

Oh, and in interesting news today, SpaceShipOne has just become the first private manned vehicle to travel to space and back. Apparently later this year they’ll be trying to the X Prize, where they need to sent up 3 people twice within a certain timeframe with the same launch vehicle.