Back to lifting

Went to see my Orthopedic specialist on Tuesday for my 3 month check in and received, as I expected, good news.  Well, actually it was good and bad.  My back is a good as it's going to get, that's the good part.  I can once again lift 5 gallon buckets of paint that's the bad.  Why is it bad?  Because now I can open the store since that's when most of our 5 gallon buckets are sold.  That means getting up at 3:30 in the morning, something the dogs never get used to doing.
And there is always the possibility that the remaining discs between L1 and L2 will once again squirt out their jelly.
This is what my back now looks like.

If you blow up the picture you can see that the disc between L4 and L5 no longer exists, and that those vertebrae have fused together.  The same thing is happening between L3 and L4, in fact the fusion between those vertebrae is almost complete.  These fusions limit my ability to twist and turn and bend, to some extent - solid bone does none of those things.  At some point all that bone growth will need to be removed if I want to be able to walk.  Hopefully it will be years from now.

Somewhere between a Cadillac and a Chevy Malibu

There I was berating both my insurance company and The Arlington Group, and then last evening I received the actual denial in the mail.  This morning I called OIP (Orthopedic Institute of Pennsylvania) and made an appointment to get a second opinion.  Why? Because the denial was very specific about one thing - the spinal fusion.  They pretty much rebutted every  point my orthopedist had used to justify the surgery in the first place.  So I did what I should have done 33 days ago, decided to get a 2nd opinion.  I also called the Arlington Group and told them I was going to need copies of my MRI as well as my X-rays.  I have not heard back from them.

Things have changed in the past 33 days.  Back then I was falling down a lot - I don't fall any more.  Back the only way I could go up or down a staircase was on my butt - today I, as long as there are banisters, I can walk up and down.  Back then, the only way I could drive a car was by pulling up on my pants leg to move my foot from the gas pedal to the brake pedal.  Today I have absolutely no problem driving.  I drove over to see my 81 year old mother on Mother's Day.  Thursday evening I'm going to see the Avengers.  So do I really need to have extensive back surgery, where they fuse the L2, L3, L4 and L5 vertebrae together?  I suspect this 2nd opinion is going to say 'not necessary.'

So, did the insurance company do right?  Probably.  Did the Arlington Group do me wrong?  Nah, I don't think so, not really.  They were most likely trying to sell me a fully loaded Cadillac when what I really needed Chevy Malibu.