Jess,
After reading that report, it holds no surprises for me. Your left hip pain could be a combination of your hip injury, bursitis (which is extremely painful) and nerve impingement (which is also extremely painful). So it's no wonder that your hips hurt. I will try to give you my best interpretation from my layman's perspective.
To tackle these one at a time, I'll start with the hip injury. The fact that you don't remember injuring it doesn't surprise me. You were probably initially getting most of your pain from that pinched nerve in your spine. That's why the pain would go away if you rested or were able to do some things with relatively less pain. My niece was in boot camp for the Army and got stress fractures in her feet. She never injured them in one incident, per se, but they were fractured none the less. Just because the fracture didn't show up on your MRI doesn't mean that isn't what happened. It seems to me, if I recall correctly, that you had this burning pain and numbness where you ignored the numbness (probably nerve impingement) but that the burning got worse and worse. This could either be from the probable stress fracture or the bursitis. But rest may help and follow Linda's advice for the treatment of the bursitis. Steroid injections are the treatment for bursitis. But since you either can't or are afraid to get the steroid injection, I'm wondering if daily icing of your hip will help keep the inflammation and pain at bay. Ask your doctor what else you can do.
As for your back. Facet joint arthrosis is arthritis of the facet joint. Here is a nice little article that explains it pretty well:
http://www.bjj.boneandjoint.org.uk/c...B/1/3.full.pdf
From reading your report, I feel that you stand to have at least four complications from this condition.
1. Continuing and worsening pain
2. Continuing and worsening left nerve root impingement causing pain, numbness, and loss of function of the area that the nerve is involved with. A pinched nerve becomes inflamed and if it is pinched long enough can cause the nerve to die. This is permanent.
3. Worsening stenosis, which actually squeezes the spinal cord itself and cause pain and loss of function below the impingement.
4. Autofusion of your spine. The risk of this is sometimes you get to the point where you are inoperable. This happened to a friend of mine, as you know.
I know that you know all of these things already. I would definitely ask your doctor about them anyway. The thing that concerns me the most for you is the fact that you are back and forth about surgery. I would hate to see you opt for surgery and then be told you can't have it. My friend was willing to follow it through, but I'm not convinced that you are. I would seriously recommend talking to your doctor about it so that you know which decision is right for you. Of course, a surgeon is going to recommend surgery since that is what they do. Maybe since you are working with Dr. Lonner you can talk to him about it IF your insurance allows you to see him. If you talk to your pain doctor he may be able to come up with some alternate treatments to keep the pain under control if spinal fusion is absolutely NOT what you want.
My heart goes out to you and I wish you the very best!
After reading that report, it holds no surprises for me. Your left hip pain could be a combination of your hip injury, bursitis (which is extremely painful) and nerve impingement (which is also extremely painful). So it's no wonder that your hips hurt. I will try to give you my best interpretation from my layman's perspective.
To tackle these one at a time, I'll start with the hip injury. The fact that you don't remember injuring it doesn't surprise me. You were probably initially getting most of your pain from that pinched nerve in your spine. That's why the pain would go away if you rested or were able to do some things with relatively less pain. My niece was in boot camp for the Army and got stress fractures in her feet. She never injured them in one incident, per se, but they were fractured none the less. Just because the fracture didn't show up on your MRI doesn't mean that isn't what happened. It seems to me, if I recall correctly, that you had this burning pain and numbness where you ignored the numbness (probably nerve impingement) but that the burning got worse and worse. This could either be from the probable stress fracture or the bursitis. But rest may help and follow Linda's advice for the treatment of the bursitis. Steroid injections are the treatment for bursitis. But since you either can't or are afraid to get the steroid injection, I'm wondering if daily icing of your hip will help keep the inflammation and pain at bay. Ask your doctor what else you can do.
As for your back. Facet joint arthrosis is arthritis of the facet joint. Here is a nice little article that explains it pretty well:
http://www.bjj.boneandjoint.org.uk/c...B/1/3.full.pdf
From reading your report, I feel that you stand to have at least four complications from this condition.
1. Continuing and worsening pain
2. Continuing and worsening left nerve root impingement causing pain, numbness, and loss of function of the area that the nerve is involved with. A pinched nerve becomes inflamed and if it is pinched long enough can cause the nerve to die. This is permanent.
3. Worsening stenosis, which actually squeezes the spinal cord itself and cause pain and loss of function below the impingement.
4. Autofusion of your spine. The risk of this is sometimes you get to the point where you are inoperable. This happened to a friend of mine, as you know.
I know that you know all of these things already. I would definitely ask your doctor about them anyway. The thing that concerns me the most for you is the fact that you are back and forth about surgery. I would hate to see you opt for surgery and then be told you can't have it. My friend was willing to follow it through, but I'm not convinced that you are. I would seriously recommend talking to your doctor about it so that you know which decision is right for you. Of course, a surgeon is going to recommend surgery since that is what they do. Maybe since you are working with Dr. Lonner you can talk to him about it IF your insurance allows you to see him. If you talk to your pain doctor he may be able to come up with some alternate treatments to keep the pain under control if spinal fusion is absolutely NOT what you want.
My heart goes out to you and I wish you the very best!
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