More surgery

While not the answer a lot of people want when visiting a neurosurgeon, I was really hoping for a surgical solution to the pain! Last week was a diagnostic injection under fluoroscopy into the T9-T10 facet joint that showed it is the cause of the pain, then a day spent running to the hospital every few hours...first for an injection of radioactive stuff my bones will absorb, then back four hours later to lay on a table and have the machine scan me. That was the bone scan. After that was over I had a couple of hours before the thin-slice MRI. That was another fun adventure in the tube. I found the tube at Timpanogos to be bigger but much louder than the one at Payson, but I liked the tech better, so I'll probably go to Timp in the future. So there I was yesterday with the results from all of these tests in the neurosurgeon's office. Only a 75 minute wait to see him, so he was really moving quickly that day. The results...inconclusive. All these tests and he still doesn't know for certain what is going on. Oh, well, at least he's willing to get in there and check it out! The thought is that the hardware is loose causing this problem (maybe the PT guy that hurt many months ago?) so he'll go in and replace the hardware on the left side and put more stuff on for bone growth. Should he see the hardware is not loose, he will perform a facetectomy on the T9-T10 facet joint and cut it out...then all I have holding me together on that side would be the instrumentation until the bone grew back over the course of a year. Anyway, on 5 January he'll dig in and see what can be done!