[Maria]

Christina,
I know you must be worried sick and I was hoping one of the members w/more clinical experience than myself would reply soon. That being said I was a Nurse Practitioner and long ago worked in Neurosurgery. That qualifies me for nothing at that this point other than to give the standard triage advice that I would give someone that would call the Triage line I last worked at:

Seek emergency care if you have inability to use your involved extremities, severe numbness, loss of tone/function, incontinence of bowel and/or bladder or severe unrelenting pain that doesn't go away with any positional change, rest or medications.

Sometimes our problems can flare up to a point that we think there is something worse or new going on. Sometimes there is and sometimes there isn't. If symptoms are drastically different than what you've had before I generally say report this to your treating physician or if you have any of the emergency reasons to be seen go to the ER.

If you've noticed that the symtoms are dying down as in you were in bed all last week due to pain/probs and now you're up and functioning then chances are that was a flare up.

Again, I'm not a doctor and from your history you sound like a surgical candidate so I'm not saying ignore what's going on. If you feel worse than you did before or are having new symptoms seeing your doctor for an updated MRI (don't know when your last was) is something that could be ordered. If there are no significant changes that indicate a necessity for urgent or emergent surgery then you can proceed as planned.

Hopefully someone else here w/more current knowledge/experience will hop on and reply to your post. I am retired now and what I know about the spine mostly has to do with my own or what I'd advise someone to do such as see a doctor, go to the ER and the like.

The old saying .. when in doubt check it out may be worthwhile here depending on what's going on w/your symtpoms.