Yesterday was my appointment with the neurosurgeon to find out if the pain I've been experiencing is spine or nerve related and if it's something that would require surgery - possibly another spine surgery, when the last one paralyzed me. I didn't get much sleep during the two nights preceding it, and I was incredibly anxious.
The doctor looked at a lot of my scans (a little too quickly for my comfort, honestly, the first time he'd seen them was at the appointment and there were several.) I had to describe the pain and symptoms and got the chance to go into detail about what exactly it's like. It was good to be taken seriously since I had bad experiences with that before and it was nice to watch the guy pay such close attention to my symptoms.
He thinks I have some complications from shingles.