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Old 11-22-2008, 09:13 PM
Adrienne Adrienne is offline
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One time my husband came with me for an MRI and it turned out he knew one of the techs (he's an M.D.) so he got a freebie just for the hell of it.
Every single disc, cervical and lumbar, was noteworthy in the report. Dessicated, degenerated, shrunken, bulging, narrowed, impinged, hypertrophied, mangled, tangled and speghettied. You name it, we saw it.
Yet the man is in ZERO pain. He had this MRI on a lark.

They told us this was a 'normal' reading for a man his age. Maybe your Dr. was trying to say that degenerated discs aren't necessarily a disease. That they're more an inevitable fact of life, like wrinkles or baldness. 'Disease' might be a misnomer; degenerated discs aren't a disease unless they are bothering you.

I'm told over and over again that MRI's give way too much information, it's like using a microscope to make sure your kitchen floor is clean.Where do you scrub?? Maybe your Dr. was trying not to scare you needlessly at the time...as I'm sure there are many blissfully ignorant people out playing tennis whose MRI's look like total hell.

Of course your doc could have been an a-hole too; I don't mean to discount your viewpoint. Just wanted to present the another perspective.

Adrienne
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Minimal DDD L4/L5
Minimal DDD L5/S1
Disco 4/07 : Large tear: @L5/S1
Idet 4/08 No improvement
Now looking at ADR vs. Fusion
ALIF Fusion 2/10 Stanford
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