I've now been in physical therapy for three weeks. And while the therapist, who I love, seems to think he's seeing improvement, I'm just not sure. I definitely feel better for a few hours after treatment, but that is also the same period of time that the pain patch my doctor has me wearing is in full force. By the next morning (and 8 hours of no patch), I often feel like I'm back to square one. I told my therapist yesterday that even though I'd been feeling better the last two days (but by no means does that mean pain free), I still wanted to have an MRI to find out what's really going on. He was totally against it and says it wouldn't mean anything, that the treatment wouldn't change. Which is pretty much how it went five years ago, until my doctor finally decided I wasn't improving enough and was risking nerve damage if I didn't have surgery. That process took 5-6 months. 5-6 months I can't afford (both financially and emotionally) this time around. I see the doctor this afternoon and have the feeling that he is not going to want to go the MRI route just yet. But I'm going to have to have some sort of a financial come to Jesus with him if that's true, because I flat out don't have the money to keep paying $200 an hour for physical therapy. And if I have to stay trapped in this horrific job for the rest of the year because of this injury, I will definitely have a breakdown. (And if my mother ends up in the hospital again at any time while all this is going on, I just might jump off a cliff!) On th way home from PT last night I really tried to convince myself to change my mental attitude about the whole situation and to just treat it like the pain I had in my foot a year and a half ago, and the bursitis in my right hip last year: both hurt like hell for several weeks and really worried me, but both slowly got better and are now completely gone. But it's a hard attitude to have on something that you've already been through before and that DIDN'T go away...at least without surgery. Once again, my life feels completely outside of my control and is completely exhausting me. Can't I have just one thing happen to make it feel like there's light at the end of the tunnel??