thank you.  you guys never cease to amaze me with how wonderful all of you
are.   have i told you lately, how glad i am you are in my life?  i am.  i
truly am.

i'm going to go back and re-read what all of you wrote on that thread and
copy those great suggestions and links, put them into a separate file.
that way i can refer to them and look at the links more thoroughly.

i spent 3 or 4 hours with my chiropractor friend, yesterday, after my asa
post.  it was unplanned and she had taken the afternoon off.  perfect
timing.  we went through all the mri reports together.  she put a lot into
perspective for me.  she's a good friend with this neurologist, and his
wife, and considers him a brilliant neurologist and diagnostician, but she
considers him not very good at all, when it comes to communicating with his
patients.

she said she suspected my rd was incorrect about my fibro dx, because she's
known me longer and knew my symptoms were back related (that affected my
muscles) and not muscle related (that affected my back) and that i don't
react to the fibro points like her fibro patients do.  said she also
suspected that i had a lot of things in lots of locations going on that were
causing pain, maybe not severe pain in any one specific location, but taken
as an aggregate (it was easy to mis-dx fibro because of that), i had long
passed my pain threshold that would have let me tolerate several of these
things going on, but not all of them all at once.  she said anybody would be
in severe pain if they had even mild pain in all of the locations at the
same time.  said it was almost like being tortured, by having your body
inflict a bunch of different kinds of hurts in a bunch of different places
all at the same time and constantly.

btw, i think i forgot to mention the joints and discs involved:  C3-4, C4-5,
C5-6 and  C6-7; T2-3, T3-4 and T8-9; L3-4, L4-5, L5-S1 (and S2 but that's
way different language and mentions something called an internal hemangioma
at the vertebral body and also at L3's vertebral body--which sounds more
like bone and this hemagioma thingy, rather than joint descriptions)

she said the problem with diagnosing somebody like me, is that i have so
many symptoms (that she said were indeed validated by the mri's)  that it is
overwhelming for most doctors to know where to begin.   she suggested i
develop a strategy to help guide the neuro.  so, we decided that since
flank, lower back and leg spasms and lower back pain interrupted my sleep
patterns the most and hindered my walking by causing hip pain, that we
should try to focus the neuro's attention on my lumbar region.  i agreed.
we spoke about a lot of other things too, but i think those were the most
helpful for me.

this morning ida called me to let me know she talked to dale (my neuro), to
advocate for me (what a sweetheart!)  and she suggested he focus on my
lumbar area first.  he told her he was already on it, because of an annular
tear and identified fluid in facet joints that was also noticed at L5-S1
(whatever all that means---like is that spinal fluid or disc fluid?), along
with the other stuff there.  he told her that was what he wanted the emg to
focus on.  said he thought he told me that---he didn't.  she said she told
him that i heard the words "back surgery" and everything else went out the
window.  (actually, it felt more like he shut me up with his curt reply to
my question.)  but, that's ok, cuz i did clam up and go numb when i felt
like there was nothing left to ask.

ida told me that she wanted me to know and be reassured that dale (her
friend/my neuro) is not "knife happy" and is not a surgeon.  she said he
prefers to put himself between the surgeon and his patient to make sure that
surgery is absolutely necessary.  she said that actually i've pretty much
gone through the "wait and see" thing for years, what doctors generally want
to do with back problems, because nobody bothered with my back.  she said
that it could well be that he might suggest alternatives to surgery, but it
all depends on what the emg indicates.   she said if dale says surgery is
necessary, after the emg results are in, he wouldn't  say it unless he knew
beyond a doubt it really was.  she warned me that the emg is not going to be
fun.  (i need to call and ask if i can take a pain pill or muscle relaxant
for that emg.)  she said dale told her he was surprised that i didn't seem
to know i had migraine headaches and not just ordinary headaches.  (i knew i
had migraine auras, but my headaches are all over the place and of all kinds
of degrees of intensity and durations.  so, i don't claim to have them, cuz
i don't know which is what headache.)  and he told her that he was also
somewhat surprised by how much pain i've been in and how i had tolerated it
for so long.   i told her that i was surprised he said that about pain,
since he told me pain was all in the head :-(  which made me feel like i'm
not going to convince him i hurt.  she said, well, technically it is in the
head, but he didn't get around to telling you how it arrived there
neurologically and how he knew that pain was real, did he?  nope, he sure
didn't.  anyway, i sure appreciated her help and efforts both yesterday and
this morning.

i'm kind of a bit sore again today, so i'm going to take the rest of today
off from sitting.  i've been up and down trying to write this.  so, i'll get
to the rest of the new posts tomorrow, if that's ok, you guys.

i love you guys.   thank you so much for your comments, thoughts, good
ideas, urls and sweet goodness.

kate