Pars Defect

It's been nearly a year since I posted. I'm still dealing with daily back pain. I'm tired, and every part of me is distracting because of it.

The only thing that isn't suffering, is my marriage. We've renewed our love for one another and things have never been better. But I digress.

I have a pars defect, a place where I either had a birth defect or a break in my lower vertebrae, that was ok, until I started running. The jarring motion caused me pain in my back and numbness in the nerves running down my right leg. So I've seen multiple doctors about it and had many scans. I'm going in for another MRI soon, so see if there is any change from the one i had on April of 2017.

I have three choices at this point-
1. Live with the pain, and be very careful.
2. Pain management (medicines that can help block the nerve pain).
3. Surgery- a fusion of the L5-S1 vertebra.

I've been living with the pain for 18 months now. It's depressing,  I want to be active but I have to be really careful, and I CAN NOT, UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES- RUN. Because every time I do it flares and takes weeks to get back to me being able to move without pain and without having that shooting burning, numb, weird nerve pain.

I am reluctant to try pain management. I researched it and anti depressants are commonly used to treat nerve pain, or anti convulsants.  Or opioids to dull the pain. I have Tylenol 3, from my bunion surgery, it does little to relieve any pain. Neither does tramadol (another narcotic that I have from the very beginning of this, it was prescribed by my primary care doctor the first time I went in for back pain.)

Surgery.....
Terrifying. Mainly because the doctor said that if I choose surgery, it will cause the vertebrae above the fusion to start taking on the impact and they will wear out faster, increasing my likelihood of needing further surgeries by 10-20% in the future. Plus, surgery hurts, an the recovery would not be fun. But it was a high rate of success since my main complaint is the nerve pain.

I'm waiting to make any concrete choices until my  MRI. If there of any measurable change, then surgery is an easy answer. I don't want this to get worse! But if it's exactly the same, maybe I can live with it, at least for another year. At which point Bee will be in 1st grade and I won't need to meet her at the bus stop every day.

I wish there was an easy answer. I had hoped that  wearing a brace would help (no) the epidural steroid shots would help (minimally, but they also have side effects that I didn't like), it would go away on its own (I've had issues go away before!) Alas, none of those are really the answer.

So, I keep waiting, like I've been doing for 18 months.