Latest Back News

It has been a busy couple of days. I went to see Dr. Peter Paul Varga, the Hungarian back specialist, yesterday. Jerry took me and blogged about our experience. Rather than tell you again, just click here.

Today, my friend Steve took me back to the hospital to get another I/V drug dose. When we walked in the doctor's office at the hospital, there was 2 ladies and 2 men in the room. They were speaking Hungarian, of course, but after a few minutes we realized that they were talking about me and my case (I'm not sure whether they changed when I walked in, or they were already talking about it). Before I knew it, I was on the phone with Dr. Varga. I realized that I was getting a little specialized treatment because I'm American and a paying customer.

The news from Dr. Varga wasn't good. I have a severely Herniated Disk between L5 & S1 (if that means anything to you). He said that it can't be helped by therapy and that we should move quickly towards surgery. Valerie & I will go tomorrow morning to meet with him and discuss the situation.

Now the big decision. I never imagined myself having surgery in Hungary. If I did, I wanted to do it at the Private Hospital in the country that caters to Westerners like me. It appears that if I have this surgery done here, it will be in a city hospital that looks like something from 50 years ago. I have total confidence in the doctor because he is a leading expert in the field and does these surgeries all the time. I don't have confidence in the hospital where I'll have to spend 3 or so days recovering. Having surgery and being in the hospital is stressful in the US and it seems like adding language barriers, cultural differences, etc .. . will increase that level significantly.

On the other hand, should I return to the US to do the surgery? That means a long plane flight (this whole thing got really bad on the last plane flight I took), and probably a long stay in the US in order to recover. It would be difficult to be away from my family that long.

I also have some Insurance that would pay for me to go to another European country that has better quality of medical care, although I probably can't find a better doctor than the one here in Budapest.

Please pray that we will have wisdom. At this point, I don't have a clue what to do. It seems like things are leaning towards doing it here, but I really, really don't want to. Lord, HELP!!!!

A little side note: I asked the doctor for a print-out of my MRI results and he gave me a whole CD. I posted a few of the pictures on the web. It probably won't mean anything to you, but I was amazed that they were so easy to get. Check them out here if you dare.