Just a personal health update....

Just wanted to give everyone an update on what's going on. Had my appointment with the surgeon today and my brain MRI came back clean, no tumors. I was glad to hear that but we are going to have to surgery. I have what's called a Chiari Malformation but he still doesn't think that's the cause of the cysts or syrinx in my spinal cord but he wants to go a head and do the brain surgery on that anyways. The two cysts in my spine are very large and advanced and he's almost sure that a surgery on them would leave me with some paralysis. He's not sure if doing the surgery on the Chiari malformation (CM) will allow enough pressure to be released so that the cysts will shrink but he feels because of the overall risk it's worth the shot. The CM surgery has some risk too but not as much. My surgery is scheduled on February the 5th at 7:30 AM. He said afterwards he will give it a couple of months to see if they start I shrink in size and if they do then we may not need the spinal surgery for a while. Basically the CM surgery will be removing some of the bone from my skull and first vertebra to hopefully allow for some room for spinal fluid to flow and allow the body to possibly fix the problem itself. As it is now there is so much swelling and pressure there isn't enough room for the fluid to flow to allow the body to possibly heal itself. His fear is that since I've had this from birth that my body may be beyond the point of healing the problem on its own. He said it's really hard to tell because the spinal cord is so unpredictable. 
I'm optimistic either way. I'm a pretty tough cookie. Unfortunately this will do nothing to relieve the pain I'm having which is worsening daily. I'm currently averaging 45-55mg of oxycodone daily and it's barely having any affect. 
The recovery will be at least 6 weeks. I'll be in the hospital for 4-5 days. The biggest risk is infection in the brain since it's opening the skull and cutting into the protective brain membrane. 
All in all I'm doing ok and trying to keep as busy as I can stand. Thank you all for the love and support you've given.