2024- The crappy year

In three more weeks, 2024 will either be the worst year of my life.. actual no it will still be the worst year of my life but it may actually have one good thing happen. It's hard to believe that for 10 months now I've been in pain, almost nine of which were horribly painful and sleep deprived.

When this year began I thought it would be a great year and it was so far from that almost from the beginning. The shooting pain I'd been getting whenever I would laugh got worse and then my lower back started to hurt and by the end of March I had constant pain in my lower back. At first I thought I had sciatica and tried exercises I found online that were supposed to help sciatica, but they only made things worse. When I finally reach out to my doctor, I found out that I would have to wait a month before I could be seen. And then when I was waiting for that appointment to come, it happened, after maybe an hour of sleep the pain woke me up again and when the pain finally subsided enough for me try to get out of bed, I moved my legs over my bed frame and as usual pain roared down my leg but this time I recognized the pain. It was the same pain from several years ago when I was recovering from surgery to have two schwannoma's removed from my thigh. At that moment I knew that I didn't have sciatica, I had schwannoma tumors, of course the reality wasn't that simple.

After months, multiple doctors appointment and multiple MRI's, the schwannoma's were found. Just not in my leg, no this time they were in my spine, next to my spine and in the sciatic nerve in my pelvis. The first neurosurgeon I saw didn't want to do the surgery. He explained that the location of the pain and the placement of the tumors didn't match. He recommended pain management and the "wait and see " approach to see if the tumors were still growing. Now I don't mind waiting if it's logical but I don't think that waiting for multiple tumors to suddenly stop growing is logical. Especially when one of those tumors is displacing my peripheral nerve and pressing on the cauda equina nerve roots which can result in the medical emergency called cauda equina syndrome. And when you live in a rural area like I do a medical emergency has a much slower response time. I'll never forget being told that it would be bad to do the surgery and still be in pain. I guess in his world removing tumors that may cause paralysis isn't a good thing on it own.

Thankfully, the second neurosurgeon had a completely different view. The largest tumors were causing pain and they should be removed as soon as possible. So now I'm waiting for my surgery date and hoping that he can remove the all of the large tumors. I'll still have tumors after this surgery but hopefully, I'll be in less pain. So now I'm waiting and hoping that I don't have any complications for the surgery. I really hope that everything goes smoothly but for now I'm just relieved that I have the chance for a less painful life.