[Cynlite]

Dema, I'm so glad you connected with Dr. Zeegers. He has a very kind and sometimes direct personality. His personality works fine with me because I'm pretty direct myself and don't have a problem being interrupted and redirected in a conversation. I know this is how a highly analytic mind tends to work as he processes the information and tries to put the puzzle together.

I took my time filling out the two questionnaires. I had to do both for the neck and the legs and keep the information separated without repeating myself. I spent time thinking about it first because I wanted it to be really clear in my head what I experience. It would seem that it would be easy but, it was not for me because my symptoms vary depending on if I'm sedentary, walking, walking while carrying something, sleeping, standing etc. I have to stay as sedentary as possible to keep my pain reduced and that is just not working with my personality one bit!

In the process of gathering all my medical history, I spent time reviewing it myself and I think that was a good exercise. However, I know my limitations in trying to make the conclusions myself. I know that my neck really degenerated a lot over the last 7 years and the osteophytes did grow back. I think Dr. Zeegers will be very good at figuring out what's going on since he has spent years working with this kind of information. I see months of working towards this goal coming together in the next few weeks all colliding with a significant decline in my mother's health. Emotionally, I know I cannot prepare myself for it all.