Dr. Third recommends Dr. Second

This is the week I'm supposed to be feeling not so bad, but I picked up a cold on the weekend, so I'm not 100%. My poor dad was the source of the cold; still, we had a really nice family Father's Day lunch, so it was worth it. And I've had worse colds -- despite research to the contrary, echinacea always seems to halt the progress of colds for me, and I always take it. It's been six weeks now that I've been coughing, however. In any case, I have more energy than I did last week and have been trying to walk every day. My back is behaving very well, but I mustn't push it.

On Monday, I made the pilgrimage out to Mississauga to get a third opinion from an orthopedic surgeon about spinal surgery. Dr. Third was very nice -- perhaps because I brought with me a lovely and generous woman who is a friend of a cousin and was operated on by Dr. Third for similar problems -- and overall he said the same things as Dr. Second did: I've got junctional kyphosis and compression fractures in my upper spine and spondylolisthesis in my lower spine. He says he's pretty sure it's mechanical and not cancer. He was a little more cautious about surgery, saying it isn't something to go into lightly, and I shouldn't do it unless I'm in serious pain. He agreed that the surgeon would take out as much of the steel rod as possible, and as for whether a "pedicle subtraction osteotomy" or a "Smith-Petersen" procedure (basically different ways of removing parts of the vertebra) would be called for, he said any surgeon would probably not decide what to do until he got in there. In fact, because the former procedure could cause excessive bleeding, they could go in and stop halfway through and resume at a later date! He said that once I'm opened up, anything could present itself, including a spine too osteoporotic to operate on.

But when I told him that Dr. Second sounded quite confident that he could help me, he said, "If he says that, then I'd believe him. I've seen him do amazing things." He told me that Dr. Second is highly experienced at this, even more so than he is himself. As for the first orthopod I went to, who was very discouraging about surgery, Dr. Third volunteered that that guy is not very experienced at all.

The experience thing is interesting: my brother has been going to Dr. Second for years, and putting off surgery because initially Dr. Second was discouraging about the odds of its succeeding. But lately, says my brother, Dr. Second has been more optimistic. I suppose that techniques have improved in the years he's been seeing him, but also his own skill has no doubt improved by leaps and bounds. Our biggest fear is that by the time we decide to have surgery, Dr. Second will have decamped to the U.S. like all the other good orthopedic surgeons before him.

Anyway, I'm experimenting with the Naproxen and will stop taking it again soon just to see if my back gets worse again. That will help me make the decision about surgery. Of course, just like a woman, I have to admit that despite the recent improvement in pain levels, I would most like to have the surgery for cosmetic reasons: to regain my lost height and eliminate that horrible hump at the base of my skull.

In the meantime, I'm again thinking about double mastectomy; more research to do.

Pollyanna moments:

• My neighbour Daryl drove me to the appointment in Mississauga and later we got lost trying to find a particular restaurant he likes. But it was interesting to be driving somewhere I never go, even a leafy suburb.
• Matt and I just used iChat to do a videoconference between Toronto and Red Deer, and I got to see all his house renovations and he got to see my backyard jungle. Plus I got to see his mom, which was nice since she recently had heart surgery.