Personal Update (posted 5/10/26)

I’ll post a regular column tomorrow, but I’ve got a short personal post today. 

Regular readers will remember that I’ve had a really painful pinched nerve in my neck that I’ve been trying to get figured out over the last two months.  After a bunch of tests and physical therapy, I was finally able to get a clean MRI, and then see a surgeon on Friday. 

He told me that a substantial piece of one of my spinal discs has broken off – the one between C6 and C7, for those spinal anatomy fans out there – and was lying against the nerve that travels across the back and down my left arm.  He described the surgical option for removing it, and it was not the worst-case scenario, which would have involved going in from the front through the neck, and fusing two vertebrae.  He said that this chunk could be accessed from the back of my neck, and if the surgery goes well, I wouldn’t need a fusion.

Because he mentioned surgery as an option, I asked him what the other option would be.  He said that because I’ve made a lot of progress with PT – my pain is much less intense and constant than it was in March, and I’ve been able to sleep much better – I could just continue that.  Then he said, “Of course, absorption would continue, and you might be able to avoid surgery.”

My wife and I looked at each other, and I said, “Come again?  Absorption?”

And he explained that my body will break down and absorb the broken-off piece of disc.  As if that’s something that everybody knows.  Like, your blood circulates, your pupils dilate in light, and YOUR BODY CAN EAT YOUR OWN BROKEN SPINE PARTS!  OH! OHHHHHH!!

Sorry.  I can’t help slipping into Sam Kinison mode when I hear something like that. 

I also slipped into a little Forrest Gump, too.  I asked the doctor, “Do you mean I have a magic body?!”  And my wife elbowed me in the ribs, and the doctor patiently explained that that’s something that all human bodies can do. 

Okay, it didn’t happen exactly like that.  And I did chastise the doc that maybe he might want to lead with the news that my body can absorb dysfunctional parts of itself.  But that was the gist of it. 

So I’ve got another appointment six weeks from now with the surgeon.  In the meantime, I’m continuing PT and hopefully continuing my progress, and if all goes well, my magic body will rid me of this troublesome broken spinal disc over the next 6 months or so.  And I won’t have to undergo a spinal surgery that I had not been looking forward to! 

Thanks everybody, for your prayers and questions about how I’ve been doing.  And as long as I’m making a personal post, I should mention that today is my wife’s birthday, on Mother’s Day.

I met her almost 40 years ago, when she was a 21-year-old slip of a girl, and now she looks like she’s 29 or so.  She’s been a great mom and an excellent wife, and she gave birth to two great daughters, which is an amazing magic trick on par with absorbing one’s own defective spine. 

I mean, it’s not a competition or anything.  But I think she’s winning.

As am I!

So happy Mother’s Day to all of you mothers who are reading this, and happy birthday to my Scandinavian Smokeshow!  

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