Good News/Bad News

Tom's Dr. appointment gave us some good news. It looks like the bulging in his cervical spine is on the "mild" side. Since he has degenerating disks it will most likely cause issues down the road.  Maybe not for another couple of years or maybe not for 10 or even 20 years. In the mean time, we'll take it. They did also notice the arachnoditis, I guess not knowing we already had the diagnosis. Nothing they can do for that but refer him to pain management anyway. On to the lumbar where his newest, strongest pain is at the moment.
Both doctors we had were very excited to see his X-rays (no, not the three hours worth of MRI's THOSE only showed the "mild" bulging of a couple of disks).It appears that his last fusion of L4-S1 worked so well that it has caused Flat Back Syndrome causing  inflexibility in numerous lower body muscles. Gaining curvature in the lumbar spine involves lengthening the muscle.This is why he can't stand up straight or without having his knees bent.  He has horrible muscle spasms and bouts of total numbness from the waist down. Good news, there's a way to fix it. Bad news is that fix exists of a "controlled" break of his spine and grafting wedges placed to give his spine the correct curve. It's more than the VA doctors can handle so he had some X-rays standing up and we're waiting on an appointment with a doctor for the referral.
Scary stuff but he seems excited about it. Every time he comes out of surgery he says never again but he's usually more than ready by the time they want to try something else. If they do it he'll need at least 3 months to recover so probably not until September or so. After all our niece is getting married in August. He also just got hired to be a referee for flag football for 10 year olds and younger. He's still working at Ripken Stadium as a tournament official for kids but can only do up to 4 games in a day and no two days in a row. He's also starting his Eucharistic Ministry at the hospital this week. Can't keep a good man down.

Oh Ya! we are officially open as a Foster Home as are Thomas and Natalie. With Jen and the kids here though we likely won't get called.

 Life is good.