I finally had my follow-up MRI to see if all was well after my mishap during disc protrusion surgery recovery. The first doctor said it was just muscle spasms, but the doctor who performed my surgery said the MRI showed there was in fact damage! Apparently that dive, or maybe even some other event, caused the same discs to re-herniate.

The good news, he said, was that the area they performed the surgery was not affected. They also cleared enough bone out that there’s still plenty of room for the nerve to move around. It has “floated back” into a good place where it shouldn’t be causing much pain.

The bad news is that my neck makes a constant cracking noise every time I move it, and I am still in some pain, most noticeably when I sleep on my left side. Overall though it’s much better than before the surgery. Still bothersome at times, but generally not terrible.

So, I am supposed to wait six weeks to see if things heal up any more, and if not, we can schedule a second operation. The operation would go through the throat this time and involve totally removing the discs—much more invasive and longer recovery time, but we could rest assured it would fix all my problems. I would definitely want to do it before the end of 2018 since I’ve met my out-of-pocket max.

So, this news is worse than I hoped, but also not great. We shall just wait and see.