Can I buy narcotics on ebay? (and I'm going to L.A.!)

Oh. My. God.

My lower back is KILLING ME. Nothing is helping. I sit in a hot bath. I use ice. I'm taking more than is recommended of ibuprofen, tylenol and aleve. Combined. I had some vicodin, but I used that up after my second physical therapy appointment.

Rewind.

Let me tell you a little bit about what happened last week. As we all know, I have chronic back pain for about, oh, 4 years now. I've been through injections, rfa's, lots of medications, etc. I had a new back doc but I just didn't click with him. I felt like he was listening to MY recommendations on what to do for my back pain instead of him, oh, I don't know, doing doctor work. "what have you done before? Okay, we'll do that." Bah.

So I talked to my PCP and got a referral to their back pain guy. It took a few weeks to get in, but I met with him last Thursday. I ♥ him. Seriously. First thing was he sent me for xrays. I've done xrays and mri's before and only thing anyone says is "facet joints in [particular part of spine] shows inflammation". Okay, yeah, BUT WHY? And how can we FIX it? This new guy, who I'll call Dr Love, and I have this conversation right off the bat:

Dr Love: [looking at xray] "Have you ever been a gymnast or cheerleader?"

Me: "Yeah. I did hardcore competative gymnastics for 9 years."

Dr Love: "Does your pain stem from right here?" [pointing at one spot on my back]

Me: "YES. That is EXACTLY where it hurts"

Dr Love: I would hazzard a guess that gymnastics is what did it. And the two consecutive births aggravated it more. [pointing to xray] See these two white things touching together? Those are your facet joints. And they shouldn't be touching. We should see nice big parts of black, which would be fluid, in between those points. And see all these fuzzy white things? That's new bone growth."

Me: [excited beyond belief that he fucking DIAGNOSED ME yet suddenly aware this is not a good diagnosis] Oh no.

Dr Love: But there have been great strides in facet joint fixes, from fusing your vertabrea together to facet joint replacement, which we would only do on someone young and healthy, which you are.

So. I'm exstatic a doctor, after years of going to different ones, figured out what is wrong. And even more exstatic there are treatment options. I hope nothing gets that drastic, but I'm going to continue to see this guy through it all. He started me with physical therapy, the first diagnostic stop, which I am more than willing to comply with. He even said it probably won't help, nor will the injections that are next, but it will help him in the diagnostic process. What not helps is sometimes a better indicator of a problem than what does help.

Anywho. I've been to two sessions with PT and I'm being a good girl and doing my in home excercises. Problem is, my back HURTS. A lot. More than normal and it's a constant thing, barely getting relief for even a few moments. What can I do, right? but I have my next appointment with him on Monday, which we'll talk about the next step. I'm in pain, but I'm ~thrilled~. There may be hope for a fix yet.

Oh - I'm going to LA for my brother's wedding. I'm flying in butt ass early Friday, wedding is next day 10:30a-2p and then I'm heading to mareike's house. Mareike is a commenter on my blog and you may know her, although she doesn't blog herself. I saw she lived in LA and asked if we could meet up. Looks like I'm going to spend saturday afternoon through Sunday afternoon with her. She's even setting me up on her couch for the night! Yay! We're goingt to have a full on slumber party.

So. On Friday I'm pretty much on my own all day. Is there any bloggers out there who live in the LA area who would like to meet me for lunch?