Feeling better, docs, meds, and money.

I was so sick yesterday and last night, most of this morning, and I'm just finally starting to feel better.
I don't know what it was, but man, my stomach was just wrecked, I was throwing up, cramping up, in tons of pain, and my feet that were swollen and had gone down, had started to swell again.
I managed to pull myself together to go to my new pain doctor appointment, and went for my 3:15.

It's a very strict office I'll tell ya.
They make you pay your co-pay or self pay before they see you, and there was this one guy who was $10 short of his $350.00 fee, and they turned him away, told him he had to reschedule it, they don't mess around man.
I had enough to pay my co-pay and for my scripts, but I was 2 days too early for my insurance to fill them, so I have to go back to the pharmacy tomorrow morning and pick them up before I go to my surgeon appointment at 2pm.

But anyway, the new doc is very strict but also very nice.
He took a look at my records, my CT scans from the 19th, and my blood test results, and we started there.
He said, "So you had spine fusion in 2006 from T3 to S1, wow, that's really big."
I said, "Yeah, but I just had another one, I'm now fused from C1 to S1, the whole spine."
He said, "Wow, you are the biggest spine fusion I have ever personally seen. Did you say that you're having another surgery?"
I said, "Yeah, I see my surgeon on Wednesday, and hopefully he'll have a date and a plan for what and when we're going to do. C1 and C2 collapsed after the surgery in September, my head is stuck down, I don't have much movement at all in my neck, muscle spasms in my back and legs, sometimes the spasms are so severe that if I'm sitting at my desk with my feet up and my keyboard on my lap, the spasms actually throw my keyboard clear off my lap and knock over my foot stool. But C1 and C2 were congenitally fused from birth, there's no disc space there at all, so I have no idea how he's going to fix me."
He said, "Yeah, I'm looking at your CT scan and I honestly don't know how he's going to do it, I'm not a surgeon, so I really don't know, but I can now understand why Doc R. sent you to me. You are much more complicated than the patients he usually deals with. He's a rehab pain manager, he helps people get better and get off medication, and honestly, I know you probably don't want to hear this, but I don't see you coming off of medication for another 5-8 years, maybe the rest of your life based on what I'm reading in your records. You not only have had major spine fusion and another one going to happen soon, but you have arthritis, stenosis, nerve impingement, and a lot of disc damage. It could be years before anyone even thinks of taking you off of medication, or never at all. I'm sorry."
I said, "That's ok, I already knew I was bad off."

So he wrote out my scripts, added a muscle relaxer, which I hate taking because they make me sleep for anywhere from 6-8 hours, so taking those 4 times per day, I'd be sleeping all of the time, and he added Lyrica , which is for neuropathic pain.
I didn't get to pick that one up because it needed like pre-authorization or something, and I may not pick it up at all because as of right now, the Walgreen's website says it's $82.46 for just 30 pills.
That's crazy!
I refuse to pay that much for a medication that I have no idea if it will even work for me yet.
Maybe it hasn't been processed through my Humana insurance yet, but if it has and that's how much it costs, I may not pick it up at all, or I may wait until I get my tax refund back on Thursday.
I don't know yet, have to wait and see, but as of right now, it's still not ready for me to pick up anyway.
Apparently, they still don't have the authorization for it.

So tomorrow morning, I'll go pick up my pain meds, come home, and then get ready for the long ride to Safety Harbor to see the surgeon with my sister.
I'm giving Mindy the day off...LoL
Mindy does so much for me already, and she's been working hard at her cleaning business, taking care of her family, and other things, she's exhausted, so Wednesday is her only scheduled day off, so now it's really a day off for her.
I personally think she needs a nice long vacation somewhere really nice, like maybe go out to California all by herself, stay at a nice San Diego hotel, go see a few sites, and get some much needed rest.
She works way too hard and needs a good, long break.

I've made some really decent new friends over the last few weeks.
It happened sorta by accident, I met Dustin and his girlfriend Stacey through another friend, and they have just been really awesome.
They are like totally blown away by the amount of titanium I have, Dustin calls it the 'chainsaw back' because when you look at a front view of the xrays, it looks like a chainsaw blade.
But anyway, they are both just really sweet, Dustin helped me get to my doc appointment yesterday and to the pharmacy, and today, they both just stopped by to see how I was doing.
Stacey said that after my next surgery, she'll come by anytime I need help, help clean the house, help me take showers, shave my legs, brush my hair, stuff like that, because with the halo brace on, it's going to be very difficult to do things by myself.
I had been telling Dustin yesterday while sitting in the waiting room at the docs, about how awesome my teens are and have been after my surgeries, they helped me in and out of bed, in and out of the bathroom, they have even shaved my legs, brushed my hair, they do all of the grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and so he told Stacey, and she was like well hell, this single mama needs help sometimes so let's help her.
I thought that was really sweet of them to even offer, and who knows, I may take them up on it sometimes if I'm having a wicked rough time after surgery.

Oh, Sebastian just went out and got the mail, and in today's mail was my settlement check from the Airborne class action lawsuit.
I got a check for $34.95.
Nice!