Roy saw his orthopedic spinal surgeon, Dr. LaFleur, Monday. The MRI shows narrowing of his spinal canal and vascular claudication.
Narrowing of the spinal canal is a narrowing of the spaces within your spine, which can put pressure on the nerves that travel through your spine.
Surgery is probably needed for the spinal narrowing, either fusion of several spinal vertebrae with a 6 month recovery or a lessor spinal surgery to decompress his spine with a 3 month recovery. Roy doesn’t want to have either surgery right now sincie the Thanksgiving, Christmas seasons are coming up.
He will have an epidural steroid injection as soon as we can schedule it when seeing Dr. Rochelle on Thursday in Hammond. That should numb the pain until he can have surgery. Roy will go back to Dr. LaFleur two weeks after the shot to see if it is helping. 
Roy will start physical therapy as soon as we can get it scheduled to get his body in better shape for whichever surgery he has. There is a good PT in Amite so he’ll go there. We are waiting for his first appointment to be scheduled.
Roy has vascular claudication and has to go to the vascular surgeon Dr. Eckholt on December 12th to find out if his blood circulation in the area of the aneurysm is causing or worsening his pain in areas other than his back. The orthopedic doctor wants to know that.
Last but not at all least Roy has to stop smoking to help his body get in better shape help him with the surgery and healing after. His appointment with them is on Monday at 2. So we will spend our 47th anniversary there!!
Roy is still in pain but if the epidural shot works he’ll be able to get lots of things that have built up around here taken care of while he’s not in pain. I’ve tried to do what I can to pick up his slack. Things like finishing putting on a new door frame, miter out places for something on the door frame, or putting door handles on all of the doors in the house are above my pay grade!
We both appreciate all of the prayers so far. I’ll keep ya’ll updated as progress is mnade.
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BECAUSE HE LIVES 