These are our catfish going crazy over their food at our family pond.

WHEEEEEE!

Where's the Polar Bear?

Happenings

Well, since my spinal tap on Monday, a lot has happened..... ok, maybe not a lot, but I thought I'd update you anyways.

On Tuesday, I came down with a spinal headache. This is caused by the spinal tap procedure, and is probably because of a little bit of fluid leaking out. After a couple calls to the hospital, they told me to wait a week, and then if it's still hurting they would do what they call a blood patch to fix it. They told me to call my doctor in Philly and see if she would give me something to get through the weekend. Her advice was to drink LOTS of Gatorade and at least 2 cups of coffee a day, and to stay on my back as much as I could. Well, having a 2 year old.... you know how that last part held up. To help you imagine what a spinal headache feels like, take the worst headache you've ever had and that's what you feel everytime you're sitting or standing..... and it lasts for a week before they try to fix it. Laying down helps a little, but it still is pretty bad. So I may be going into the hospital again tomorrow to have the blood patch procedure done, but I guess we'll wait and see how the spinal HA is going.

Anyways, enough of the dreary news.... a little bit of good news. We went and looked at a house on Friday, thinking that we were going to put an offer on it.... but because of various reasons, we didn't. We did however go back to a house we had seen and put an offer on before, and decided to put another offer on it. This time it got ACCEPTED! WOOHOO! So provided all goes well with the loans, etc.... in about 45-60 days or so, we'll be home owners in the Callaway, VA area. And, bonus, the house is only a mile from my parents. So now when I need help with Mia, noone has to drive an hour to Radford and back to get her. This is exactly what I prayed for, and God is opening the doors for us. He's SO GOOD!

Free Fallin'

Spinal Tap

Today I had my lumbar puncture procedure. It was definitely not as painful as I thought it would be. I felt a little pinch when they injected me with the numbing stuff, but after that I didn't really feel anything. They checked the opening pressure of my spinal fluid, which read as 20.... not sure what the normal is exactly, but the doc said I didn't have too much pressure, so that's good news, but also discouraging because it's another dead end as far as figuring out what's causing my headaches.

They told me to lay around for the next couple days and keep my head up.... literally, not emotionally... although I'll have to do both. I feel OK now unless I sit up for a few minutes, then my back starts aching and I have to lay back down.

Anyways, I guess it's back to Philly on May 29th, and see where we go from here. The next thoughts were the implant and botox injections, neither of which we can afford if insurance won't cover them, so I dunno what else the headache center can have up their sleeve.

Back Again

We just got back from Pennsylvania again. We went up on Easter, spent that day and Monday with the family, and then yesterday, Stephanie and I headed off to Philadelphia for my doctor's appointment. The reason for the appointment as you probably know was because things haven't been getting better, they started me back on one of my old meds, and they wanted to see how things were going.... also it was a follow up appointment after having the facet block shots in my neck.... which by the way, didn't help any.

The short version on this recent visit is that they took me off of 3 of my medications, started me on one new one, gave me 2 new meds to try when I get the severe headaches (which is becoming more and more frequent) and also they want me to have a lumbar puncture (spinal tap) done. They want to see if I have too much pressure around my spinal column, which if that's the case, that's a whole other kind of medicine that I need to be on instead of the migraine drugs that I'm on now. So I'm gonna call and try to set up that procedure tomorrow, and hopefully we can figure out the answer on that.

The next steps if the spinal tap is normal, is perhaps the Occipital Nerve Stimulator which I wrote about before, or maybe Botox injections. Both of these are very expensive, and may or may not be covered by insurance. Hopefully it will be, as I have pretty good insurance despite having to fight with them a couple weeks ago after they cancelled my coverage and didn't bother to tell me.... but that's a story for another day.

Thanks for all the continued prayers.... I know there's an answer out there somewhere!

Maybe All I Need Is A Shot In The..... Neck?

Yesterday I went to the pain management clinic to get my facet block injections. Basically they numbed me in a couple spots on my neck, then gave me the nerve block shots which went in deep to some nerves that come off of my spine.... right around my C2 and C3 vertebrae. I'm not gonna lie... it wasn't the most pleasant experience. It didn't hurt really, but just tremendous amounts of pressure. Anyways, they said that it may take a couple days to notice anything, and that I'd have a really sore neck for a few days.... they weren't kidding. No help so far today, as I've also got a rather bad headache. If however it ends up working, which they told me would be a 50% reduction in my headaches, then they would do another one in about a month to make sure this one wasn't a fluke. If that one worked also, then that opened up all kinds of new roads, such as freezing the nerve, burning it, etc.... permanantly blocking it. So I'll keep you updated as to whether they work or not.

Also today, we finally closed on our house that we sold in Radford. About a week or so late, but at least that burden is off our shoulders..... now if things will just work out for the one we wanna buy down here.....