Category Archives: health & fitness

A narrative of my journeys with diet, exercise, and various healthcare professionals

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Learning About My New Pal, Spondy

If this were 1998, I would create a new website about spondylolisthesis. I’d include links to studies, and to other websites, and maybe write a few words about why I put the site together.

If I had more time on my hands, and more knowledge, I would create my own spondy blog, or do a podcast about it. Maybe I’d see if I could interview experts in the field, talk to my chiropractor, get some original content to post for the spondy community.

As it is, I have a personal blog where I basically do public journaling. I like being able to search my journal entries for past experiences, and I like being able to share my thoughts with friends and strangers. So, I’ve created a category on my blog for spondylolisthesis, and I’ll be documenting my experiences and discoveries, wins and fails, online resources, et cetera.

This condition is part of my life now, therefore it’s part of my blog. If I can collect some info that helps other people along the way, so much the better.

I actually went looking for podcasts about spondy today, for something to listen to while I walked around downtown during my lunch break. (My chiropractor put me back together yesterday afternoon after I tweaked my L4 on Friday during my very first spin class, and I’m still recovering. I needed that walk more than I needed today’s Weight Watchers meeting.)

While I didn’t find a dedicated spondylolisthesis podcast, I did find an episode of eOrthopodTV in which the host, Dr. Randale Sechrest, interviews spinal surgeon Dr. Nitin Bhatia about the symptomology and treatment of spondylolisthesis.

I felt like I needed to listen with prejudice — the interviewee was a surgeon, after all, so I expected him to promote surgery over the more conservative and non-invasive methods of treatment. Which, of course, he did. However, being a surgeon, he also explained the procedure(s) much more thoroughly than I had previously read, and made them seem much less scary. That said, I’d need to live with this level of pain for quite some time before I’d be willing to go under the knife to relieve it.

Other things I learned or had reinforced:

Spondylolisthesis will not paralyze me. It’ll just make life considerably more uncomfortable.

I also learned that I’ve developed this problem much earlier than most. It tends to crop up in older people — think fifties or sixties — although they did mention that women tend to be more susceptible than men.

Allow me to repeat this year’s mantra: I’m 37! I’m not old!

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MRI Results: Same As It Ever Was

I went in to see my chiropractor last Wednesday about the results of my MRI. I’d looked at the images that the technician had given me, but I’m no medical professional, so I had no idea what they really meant.

Dr. Smith gave me a copy of the findings, which still needed some explanation. Bottom line? Nothing too bad. If I keep going to the chiropractor and take pain meds and anti-inflammatories as needed, I’ll continue to live relatively pain-free… until I don’t.

Details:

  • 50% narrowing of the disc space height at L5-S1 (the MRI didn’t go up past my thoracic vertebrae, so the M.D. who did the analysis had no way of knowing about my extra transitional vertebra — technically, it would be L6-S1).
  • 1-2mm of bulging at L3-4.
  • 1mm of facet fluid seen at L4-5 and L5-S1.
  • The alignment of the lumbar vertebral bodies is preserved.

My chiropractor patted herself on the back for my vertebrae being in alignment, but it turns out that an MRI will not properly show spondylolisthesis in all cases, due to the nature of how it’s done (having to lay supine, on one’s back). I did a little research into what the hell “facet fluid” was, and came across an article: The correlation between exaggerated fluid in lumbar facet joints and degenerative spondylolisthesis. In this article, the authors explain that degenerative spondylolisthesis is not always identifiable using an MRI, since the patient is laying down and the vertebrae naturally re-align themselves (to a degree). The presence of excess facet fluid — which “is the result of degeneration of the synovial joints” — has a positive correlation with spondylolisthesis.

In layman’s terms: the fluid is another way of showing that my vertebrae are out of alignment when I’m standing upright and the joints are going to shit.

Another bit of knowledge I found while doing some research has led me to sign up for spin class this Friday. I discovered this great page, A Patient’s Guide to Spondylolisthesis, which goes into much greater detail than I’d ever have time to do with my chiropractor. It explained a bit more why I have the pain I do (although Dr. Smith did clear that question up recently, too), and it gives even more examples of non-surgical ways to relieve the pain — such as increasing flexibility in the low back and hamstrings (Dr. Smith prescribed me yoga for that), and use of a stationary bike to help open up the spaces where the nerve roots exit (hence my sudden interest in spinning). It also details the surgical last resorts, like removing part of the vertebrae to stop them from pinching the nerve, then fusing the vertebrae together so that no further slippage can occur. (Yikes.)

At my appointment with her, Dr. Smith told me that it really boils down to me seeing her once a month from now on, doing yoga from now on, continuing to keep my weight down — basically, keep doing what I’m doing, but do it forever.

This isn’t going away… but it’s not getting worse, either.

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Operation Braceface: Day 141

It’s been nearly five months since I first got my braces on, and there’s already a remarkable difference.

My top teeth are just about in alignment now, apart from a couple of them still needing to be rotated a smidge and my overbite adjusted. Well, and the gaps from my extractions still need closed. OK, I guess they’re just a lot more in line than they used to be. And that poor little bottom tooth that came up behind the rest is finally going to be tied into the archwire with the rest of them next time.

I already had chains on the bottom teeth to help close the gaps, and I had a coil in front of my reclusive bottom incisor to help open up that space. Today we added chains to the top teeth and rubber bands. The plan is to start moving those eyeteeth and not so much close the gaps entirely as shift them around. The spaces between my teeth will be a lot more visible from the front as the gaps close, but, as my orthodontist said, it’s temporary.

Anyone who’s had rubber bands knows how they work: I’ll be wearing them all the time, except when I eat and brush my teeth. My configuration is Class II — hooking the upper canine to the lower second molar.

I’m super stoked about my bottom incisor coming up to join the gang, though:

That tooth. That damned tooth. I have oddly vivid memories of biting into a hot dog as a child, then looking at the imprint my chomp had made on the end of the dog — a little square wave, a butte, a sticky-outie part where a normal person would have just seen a bite mark.

No more.

You can see from the pictures (sorry for the poor focus, but I was taking them while wrangling a small child) that I opted to go back to the normal silver color for my o-rings. Colors were fun, and perhaps I’ll do them again for the holidays, but I don’t need to have a technicolor mouth year-round.

My friends and co-workers have continued to notice my teeth moving into position, which feels good. I mean, all I’m doing is paying money to a professional and letting him do things to my mouth that make it hurt, but it feels good to have it noticed, all the same.

I might feel differently tomorrow when I’m eating soup for lunch, but for now… braces are awesome.

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My First MRI

At my February chiropractor visit, I complained to Dr. Smith about a numbness in my left leg, especially when sitting on the floor or laying on my left side to sleep. She told me that I should call her for another appointment in a week if it didn’t get better after my adjustment.

It didn’t really, but I opted to see if I could just deal with it. I mean, it wasn’t painful, exactly, just uncomfortable. Stiff. Numb. Weird. I learned how to adjust my hips a certain way when I laid in bed, and I stopped sitting on the floor to play with Connor. Problem solved, right?

When I went in for my March visit last Friday, she asked (as she always does) how my lower back was feeling. I had to tell her that the leg was still going numb at times. So, she flipped through my chart to see what I’d been complaining of in the past months, and saw that the leg thing was a relatively new occurrence. Kind of a red flag. She’d been thinking about having me get an MRI from the beginning, she admitted, but now she was sure. She assured me that I’m doing all the right things: doing yoga to stretch and strengthen, getting my weight down, and (although she didn’t say this out loud) no longer running.

She called in a prescription, I guess you’d say, for an MRI at a local medical imaging firm, and told me to come in a couple days after my MRI to discuss the results.

Today was the MRI.

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My DietBet Epiphany

My weight loss journey has been slow going. I lost a shit-ton (about 50 pounds) fairly quickly on the Atkins Diet about ten years ago, and only gained back a small fraction of that. Almost five years ago, I joined Weight Watchers to take off the few pounds I’d put back on, and to get the momentum going again, since I still had about 40 pounds to go to reach my goal weight.

Diana at Waikiki

In the five years I’ve been on program with WW, I’ve gone through a few up and down cycles. I lost 15 pounds in three months when I first joined, and that was the steepest loss I’ve seen since. After that, I took six months to lose five pounds, then gained back ten pounds in eight months, then re-lost those ten pounds over the following year. Then I got pregnant, and lost a relatively quick five pounds in that first couple of months before I realized I was expecting. My post-pregnancy weigh-in actually wasn’t so bad — then I gained five pounds and didn’t lose it for a good six months. I’m finally back down to my lowest weight (not counting the pre-pregnancy baby hormone bonus weight loss), but it’s been really, REALLY slow going.

So, when my favorite diet and fitness blogger, Roni Noone of Roni’s Weigh, announced that she was hosting another DietBet game, I decided that, this time, I’d jump on board. Maybe what I needed was some incentive. Maybe I’d have that extra oomph if I had the promise of a payout at the end for losing 4% of my body weight in a month. I realized that losing seven pounds in a month was a big stretch for me, looking at my track record of weekly half-pound losses in a good month, but i figured I’d give it a shot, anyway.

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