The Whole Story, well most of it

okay, so I thought I would go through the whole story just to have it down so I could just refer people to it. So it started about January I guess as far as it really stepping up. I guess I have had back pain for a while and went to a chiropractor about a year before for what I thought was a sore muscle. But anyway, I had really for the first time in my life decided I no longer wanted to be twice the woman I had become so I noticed that Ballwin was having a "lose to win" challenge so I figured that would be a great opportunity and joined. I went a few times, my trainer was great and really pushed me so hard and I was actually even starting to get a little bit of that enjoyment I had heard of from a really hard work out. One morning I woke up and was in a blinding amount of pain so I called the doctor. Well, turns out one of the little machines they had me use for back extensions we thought I may have hurt myself on so I did PT for about six weeks with no relief so we did an x-ray and they found I had a tumor in my spine, well not exactly a tumor but a lack of where they should have been bone. This led into months and months of every test they could come up with. From what I have been able to figure out is that what they thought it was was metastatic cancer and they were looking for the primary site. Four months later after MRI's, CT's, blood tests, PET scans, ultrasounds and whatever else they decided that there was no known cancer anywhere else in my body so we did a biopsy to get the the bottom of the one that I do have. After several biopsy and two different neurosurgeons I was finally given a diagnosis of desmoplastic fibroma. It is one of those things that is so rare and hard to pin down that it kind of falls into that middle ground between cancer and not cancer. It pretty much is but isn't at the same time. Too slow growing to have to worry about chemo or radiation but also means they can't shrink it before they take it out and have to take it out in total. It is located on the T11 vertebra so the operation is going to pretty much suck ass. They will also have to be taking out the pedicle and side of the vertebra right above and below the tumor so three in total, not to mention collapsing the lung so they have room to do all this and doing something to the ribs since they won't be attached to anything anymore. And of course adding rods and pins and nuts and actual cadaver bone. I wonder if this will change my personality like that movie I saw one time. I don't know much about the recovery yet. I will be in the hospital for about a week and then home unless I am having trouble breathing on my own after the collapsed lung, then I get to go to a nursing home for a week or two. Could be interesting, all the tapioca I can stomach. Okay, off to bed...trying to do pictures on here so I can add some things I have found