This was a hectic weekend. On Saturday we took family portraits and had our consultation with Dr. Meyer; Sunday was a marathon of a Christmas family shopping trip down at South Coast Plaza. We thought by getting there when the stores first opened we'd be avoiding the crowds -- little did we suspect that an hour later, the line for getting your picture taken with Santa would be literally out the door. It was fun, but exhausting.
So, no Santa pictures this weekend, but I still consider it all a success, simply because my back chose to cooperate the whole time. This is notable because my back has been a total bitch recently, and it's not getting any better -- in fact it's getting worse and I can't really be in denial about it any longer.
I was diagnosed with mild scoliosis as a kid. Scoliosis is a curvature of the spine; in my case it curves to one side in a way that's not immediately noticeable but which has caused me back problems throughout my 20s and now, my 30s. The first time I ever pinched a nerve was at my college friend Rachel's wedding and it was like one day I was fine; three hours later I was in excruciating pain, using champagne to wash down Advil and feverishly searching drugstores for a heat patch. Six months later it happened again; a few months later, again.
These days I'm used to it -- every so often something throws my back out of whack. It might be a bad massage, or having slept on it funny, or moving in the wrong way. Whatever the cause, I usually get one day of really intense pain and then it tapers off and after a few days everything is mostly back to normal. When I was working out a lot, the problems all but went away and I stopped thinking about them.
Following Sadie's birth, though, things got bad again in a hurry. I haven't joined a gym since we moved to the valley; my sole source of activity is going for a long walk every afternoon with the baby and the dogs. My muscles have weakened and once I began lifting a baby every day, I went back to my usual pattern of occasional back strain and healing.
Then came Halloween, the day I carried Sadie home from the park to meet the locksmith, and the day after, when I was putting her in the carseat and something in my back went horribly awry. Since then, the pain has gone through periods of being more or less intense, but it has never fully gone away. Last weekend it worsened again, and Scott finally yelled at me to go see an orthopedist.
So I did, and surprise surprise, my problems are due to the scoliosis. One of the discs in my lower back is "unhealthy," (his exact words), and tends to get pushed out of joint every so often. I don't know, I don't speak Medical, and he wasn't interested in teaching me. He ordered an MRI and began throwing around terms like "epidural injections" and "invasive surgery." I got the hell out of there. An exercise/strengthening regimen, I can handle. Surgery and cortisone shots I'll avoid until absolutely necessary, thanks very much.
I have another appointment with a different orthopedist this week for a second opinion -- not because I disagree with the diagnosis, but because I'd rather have a doctor who believes in exercise first and giant scary needles second. If his prescription is to join a gym, I'd be thrilled with that -- it would give me an excuse to put Scott in charge of Sadie's bath time, for one thing. We'll see what he says.
All I know is that this getting old stuff really blows.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Can you tell a little more about the social development test they use?
ReplyDeleteI'm remembering you at 15 months. Socially you were accepting of other kids, but you wouldn't go out of your way to play with them. As soon as you learned to read, that was your preferred activity most of the time, even in social situations. You were cautious in new situations and continued that way. It was a part of your personality; I never saw it as developmental issue, or a problem.
This is not to argue that Sadie has no developmental issues. As I indicated, I don't know how they test for these things.
But I think there is a danger in focusing exclusively on milestones as a way of assessing a child's development. What if Sadie remains, as you did, cautious, not overly social in new situations? Is that a developmental problem, or is that simply who she is?
OOps, sorry, as you can see this belongs to a different blog entry! Lo siento. I am so sorry about your back!!! Let me know if I can help.:)
ReplyDeleteI misspelled the name -- it's known as the Gesell Developmental Schedules and it's a list of criteria that a child should, by average standards, be able to meet, broken down month by month.
ReplyDeleteI'll show you the progress summary that Joy wrote up for us, outlining where Sadie is testing at and why, though I don't have the actual developmental schedule to refer to.