I Guess Its My Turn

Ok, well it seems as though Our Ordinary Stories is going to become a means to keep folks updated on medical issues once again.  But I guess this time its my turn to have the issues.  Most family & friends know that I have been dealing with some back issues for the last several months.  Since Thanksgiving, things have gone downhill extremely fast.  I am pretty much in severe pain all day long every day.  It's gotten to the point where I can't even take care of Will & Julianna (they have been spending a lot of time at grandparents and at Aunt Erin's).

Monday, my pain got to the point where we pushed really hard to get me in for an MRI.  I am just so tired of hurting all the time and wanted some answers.  On Thursday evening my doctor called me back with the results, and things have just snowballed in the last 36 hours.  I have degenerative disc disease (arthritis in my back I guess) and a herniated/bulging disc.  They said this could be causing me some discomfort, but should not be causing me all the pain I am feeling.  Even the strongest pain meds I could be prescribed wear off within 2-3 hours.  My doctor then went on to drop some unexpected news that then led to all this craziness.

Disclaimer: I do not know a lot of information right now and could totally be screwing things up, but this is what Joe & I were told today.  The MRI also showed that I have red marrow reconversion in my back.  The explanation we were given is that the bone marrow in my back (which should be yellow in adults-mostly fatty) has reconverted back to red (what it is in children).  This can happen for about 800 different reasons, but most the of the top causes are not good ones. 

So Joe went into his "get things done" mode and moved things along pretty quickly for us.  My doctor was kind of dragging her feet on doing much of anything until next week (since today was Friday), but Joe was great and today I got x-rays of my hips and legs (another area of extreme pain when my back is bad), I had a crud load of blood work drawn and next week I have appointments to see a back specialist about the disc issues and a hematologist/oncologist for the other issue...got the call this afternoon that that appointment will include a bone marrow biopsy...fun.

So needless to say, I'm freaking out just a little bit.  Some scary words were thrown around by my doctor (whom will most likely not be my doctor for much longer...she admitted she had to google some of what she was explaining to us! Seriously????)  I would love if everyone could say some extra prayers for me and for Joe, who is now doing ALL of our household/parenting responsibilities on his own in addition to working, and for my kiddos who are not all that happy with being shuffled around houses since mommy can't take care of them.