Well, it\’s happened: I finally have a competent doctor looking at my ass. This is the same doctor that I saw back in May, the one who gave me his e-mail address and direct line. The one who played show-and-tell/teach the resident physician how to do cortisone injections into the ass when the pain is coming from a bone spur on the coccyx. The man whose bones I want(ed and still want) to jump. The one rheumatologist I\’ve met with who actually seems to be up to date with research and not stuck in the dark days of the eighteen tender points examination.
I dropped the MRIs of my spine off at Washington Hospital Center back in August. My doctor and the once-monthly visiting specialist radiologist got around to look at them a few weeks ago. To paraphrase my doc, \”We\’d spent a whole day staring at film, looking for things that mostly weren\’t there, then we popped yours in and said \’okay, THIS shouldn\’t be there.\’\”
Apparently, my osteophyte is bigger than we all originally thought. My doc said that he usually tells patients not to remove their bone spurs, but in my case, he wants mine off immediately. He\’s upset that no one else has recommended removing it before — in fact, on the contrary, every other physician has told me that there isn\’t anything that can be done, which is an outright falsehood; the procedure is called a coccygectomy (and I\’m fucking pissed of about generally being more informed and knowledgeable about the issues surrounding my health than the degreed physicians and specialists that my health insurance pays for me to see).
My doctor at Washington Hospital Center is writing letters for me — not just referrals, but letters, stressing the importance of this procedure. He\’s writing them to my primary care physician, to my health insurance, and to the doctor at Hopkins.
Assistant Professor of Orthopaedic Surgery, Dr David Cohen is the neurosurgeon who is going to be doing my coccygectomy. I\’m meeting with him on November 12 for a preliminary examination and I\’m hoping to put off the surgery until coat check season is over, in March. I need to get that extra few grand, because the surgery is a major deal. I\’m going to have to break my lease and move to a place without stairs, for a start. Second, after the surgery, patients aren\’t allowed to sit for upwards of three months, so I won\’t be in school, working, or doing a goddamn thinking except wearing out my library card.
Oh, man. Oh man, oh man, oh man. It\’s coming OUT! Finally! My broken ass is coming out!
I\’m celebrating tonight by having Dave tattoo me with Humpty Dumpty.
