Breathing a sigh of relief

I saw a doctor today for my MRI test results. Not a resident, an overseeing doctor. My own overseeing doctor was off today, so I saw another--and wish she were my own doctor all the time, she was awesome!

Nothing dire.

"Mild facet osteoarthritis bilaterally at L3-4 and L4-5...At L5-S1 there is mild DDD and a small left paracentral disc extrusion which mildly narrows the lateral recess and focally contracts the traversing left S1 nerve root, without frank nerve root compression....Impression: Mild spondylotic changes, with a small disc herniation at L5-S1 with a mild mass effect on the left S1 nerve root. No significant spinal stenosis or other neural impairment."

Bottom line: Normal wear and tear, with a small disc hernia that likely is the cause (from pressing on the nerve root) of the foot tingling.

The doctor suggested chiropractic, which surprised me, given how a lot of MDs feel about chiropractors. Physio also would be an option, but it's physio that got me into this situation in the first place, so I'm very leery of going that route again. I'll look into chiro once our work conference is over and the dust has settled.

She also is going to put in a referral to a nerve specialist, as the MRI doesn't explain the cause of the skin numbness on my leg (at L2, from the Google image she brought up to show me). That appointment could take a couple of months (it's an electromagnetic test, I think...one of her patients referred to it as a cattle prod). So presumably there's peripheral nerve compression of some sort, but she assured me that it didn't in any way seem dire.

I admit I was pretty relieved that it's nothing serious; I was stressing quite a bit over it.

So it's a good note to end the week on. Now we just have to get through our conference next week!

Peace.

Pics from 1 -2 weeks ago.