My back.

So, get ready for a long story.

At the beginning of December I started having back pains on my way home from school. Was so bad I had to stop halfway and get out and walk before I could get back in the car. When I got home Mark looked up Sciatica and I had all the symptoms. (Pain in my lower back/left leg and constant rectal pressure TMI sorry). I laid around on the couch for a few days, and then finally after Mark pestering me for a while I went to the doctor. He ordered a back X-ray and said it looked fine, and this was probably just sciatica and it would get better in a few weeks, but if it got worse I needed to call back. So a few days later my left foot wasn't working anymore, it wouldn't come off of the floor when I was walking, so I called the doctor back and he scheduled me for an MRI. The MRI was quite the experience... loud and scary- like being in a coffin. Glad it was over. Went to my followup appointment a few days later expecting to hear that they found a bulging disc or nothing and it would get better on it's own. Instead the doctor told me they found a mass in a muscle in my back. It's about 3cm's and is located inside a muscle in my lower left back, i forgot the name of the muscle it's a long one. It was very scary news and the worst it could be is Cancer... the best is it's just some sort of scar tissue or fatty tumor. I spent a lot of hours crying about this and being scared about having cancer. I don't want to die. I don't want to leave my kids and I don't want to have to go through chemo. No one does though and if this turns out to be cancer then I will fight with everything I have.

I still don't know what it is yet. I have an appointment with a surgeon on Tuesday and he will discuss the surgery options and biopsy options. I don't really care how they get it out, I just want to know that it is!

In the mean time I am stuck on the couch, unable to do much of anything. Unable to take care of my kids, unable to walk around without a lot of pain. Mark and my mom have been taking care of everything for me. Mark with the kids, Mom with the cleaning. I'm really getting tired of telling the kids that I can't do something they want to do. :(

I want to know what I'm facing. I know we are all going to die, I just want to know if I can go back to planning a future, go back to school, or gear up for a long battle, chemo treatments, radiation and surgery.

I took this quarter off from school because I can't walk very well and since I don't know what my surgery or treatment will be like, I didn't want to enroll and then have to quit and pay for the quarter anyway. Would like to go back in April.