Good report Phil. And we are so glad for you! Thanks for sharing. Praise God for taking care of this too.

Vicki


----- Original Message -----
From: Phil Scovell <[log in to unmask]>
To: [log in to unmask]
Date: Sunday, October 27, 2013 9:25 pm
Subject: Report

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> Tuesday, October 29, I go for my first checkup related to the surgery on my lower back.  That's two weeks from the day of the surgery.  My hands have lost some of their strength, something I don't think I noticed before the surgery other than it seemed I was typing slower than ever before.  I imagined that will improve.  My left foot, a few weeks before the surgery, started dragging.  I fell a couple of times before it finally dawned on me I wasn't lifting my foot high enough because I couldn't.  It also went to sleep, numb, one night as I was asleep.  It caused me to awaken because my toes felt like icicles and my big toe felt like a rock.  For the last few months, well, since before last Christmas, I have had lower back pain.  It often covered everything from my belt down to my feet but with the left leg and foot being the worst.  Five years ago, as some of you recall, I had something similar but it was my neck that needed the surgery.  That time they fused vertebra C4 and C5 and then from the back of my neck, they repaired a disk that was falling apart and causing most of the neurological problems I was having from the waist up.  This time, just like the first time, the various doctors I went to see over 9 or 10 months, kept telling me the same thing; go to physical therapy.  I did and it got worse.  Finally I went two different times to the emergency room.  The first time they did nothing; yes, I mean nothing, other than giving me a couple of weak pain pills that did nothing at all for me.  Later, by about a week, I had to return because my left foot wouldn't let me walk without falling.  Let me tell you something.  When a blind person can not use their fingers and hands to even type, dial a telephone, read Braille, or use a screw driver like it was for me almost 5 years ago, it is scary and I was scared back then.  This time, I figured I'd eventually make it through but the pain kept getting worse and worse and when my foot stop working normally, I got scared.  Finally, at the second emergency room visit, I got there at 11 PM and the woman doing the MRI scans stayed late to do a scan on me.  The doctor found both disks on either of my lower spine, between L4 and L5, bulging and coming in contact with the nerves passing by and going down to my legs.  They call them sometimes herniated disks, I think, but they open your back, clean out material around the disks, and in my case, the nerves looked great.  Otherwise, they would have had to fuse two vertebra together just like in my neck and recovery time then took 3 years before all the pain went away back then.  I still never got full strength of my legs back before this incident two weeks ago.  That was probably my fault for not exercising enough but every time I would, within one or two months, my lower back would pop out and create horrible pain.  At this writing, I have no more pain below my waist other than the numbness that is slowly dissipating in my left foot.  Now maybe the physical therapy and exercising will help.  I tried telling them 5 years ago my lower back had problems, too, but they wanted to fix my neck first and maybe my lower back would be better.  It was better, but still went into periods of pain, and about 3 years ago, I had an MRI which showed exactly what it showed this time; just not as severe.  The doctors all kept saying it would go away with physical therapy and that it was too severe damaged to repair.  Thanks for nothing because I lived with some of the worst pain in the past 3 or 4 years I ever experienced.  I thank God we finally found a doctor who agreed with the MRI results and the recovery time is much faster this go around.
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> Phil.
> Living His Name