Walking over to the main building at lunchtime, my legs were giving way a lot, but didn’t seem so bad when I walked back to the office 20 mins or so later.
I went over for my gym session later in the afternoon and was ok on the bike, had the usual problem doing leg presses in that I could do the reps fine, but couldn’t control the smoothness of my movement. I then went on the balance board. I think the idea is that you gently rock from side to side without letting it touch the ground, rather than bumping from one side to the other like I was! Going back and forth was a little better. We finished by doing some stretches, which seemed ok.
I went back to the office for a couple of hours and then went over for the MRI. Given they were doing the full spine, I’d figured it would probably about an hour in total, and the radiographer confirmed that but that he would bring me out part way through to attach a monitor before doing the final bits to check my CSF flow. Part way through the first session I could feel my right side going numb and was really struggling to stop my right leg from twitching. I was glad of a break after about 45 minutes to put the monitor on me so it gave me a chance to stretch my arms and legs. By the time I came out after another 15 mins I was walking like a 90 year old and had the worse pain I’ve had in months. Why did it have to be today that I left my pain meds at home? Cat picked me up and having got home and taken some pain relief I started to feel a bit more normal again.
Not sure how to take the fact that the radiographer apparently recognised me as soon as he saw images from a previous scan. Is my spine really that recognisable? He must image loads of people each year but he recognised me by my images, and yet I’ve had I think now 6 MRIs and I didn’t recognise him from previous ones.