DisSuggs4u

Four years ago today, I walked into a HealthSouth outpatient surgical center here in Austin, TX, to have surgery performed on my lower back — specifically, a partial discectomy to repair a herniated disc between the L4 and L5 segments of my lumbar spine. The surgery itself lasted just under an hour, the nurses had me up and walking around five hours later, and I literally walked out of the hospital nineteen hours after they stitched me up.

While back on my feet, I was not cleared to work for another two weeks, and it was half-days at best. It took two months of therapy and exercise (mostly walking) before I was back to anywhere near “normal.” Seven months after that, I was finally released from therapy and able to ride my bike again. The biggest bonus: over the course of the experience I met and grew to know better the person who would become my wife.

Most people, after hearing that I have had back surgery, ask “How did you injure yourself?” Well, there is no one answer. It was most likely a mixture of things, including a white-water rafting accident and crash while skiing. Truth be told, I had been battling the herniation for at least two years prior to my surgery. Off and on, my back would seize up if I moved just “right.” Or, more rarely, I would feel some pain in the back of my right leg, similar to a pulled hamstring.

One time, the pain was so bad that I literally laid on the floor of my apartment in the fetal position waiting for the searing pain to go away. After crawling to my bed and laying there for a couple of hours, I was “fine” and went about my business.

It wasn’t until the late summer of 2002 when things really went south and I was experiencing pain every day. Over time, the pain got worse and worse. Stubborn that I am, I even rode my bike on a 150-mile charity ride in some pretty severe pain. The week after that, I was in too much pain to ride. That was when I finally broke down and went to see my doctor.

Being the person that I am, I had already done copious amounts of research on my symptoms and walked into my doctors office with a diagnosis: sciatica. After hearing my diagnosis, my doctor said, “Well, let’s exam you and see for sure. Lie down on the table, please.”

He asked me to relax and then slowly lifted my right leg. When my heel got about eight inches off the table, I almost jumped out of my skin. The doctor facial expression changed from stoicism to one of concern. He put my right leg down. Then, he raised my left leg — almost to the ceiling — and I felt fine. Again, the right leg… WHAM!

Me: “So, sciatica, right?”

Him: “No, I think you might have a pinched nerve. I’d like you to go see a physical therapist.”

Me: “Uh oh. That can’t be good.”

And so it began, my journey to my limits, both physical and mental.

Over the next few weeks, I progressively got worse and worse. The therapist I chose worked in a facility that specialized in spinal injury treatment and had both therapists and doctors who worked hand-in-hand together to treat patients. The therapists were on the same page as I was in that surgery was a final option. Conservative treatment was the goal.

The only problem was that physical therapy was not helping. So, I was assigned to a doctor at the facility who kicked up my treatment a notch. After going in for an MRI, and I was scheduled for my first epidural steroid injection the following morning.
Before the procedure, the doctor came by my bedside and said, “Hey, buddy. I got a chance to look at your MRI last night. I’m not sure if this is going to help, but we at least have to try.” Not exactly what I wanted to hear.

The procedure lasted about half an hour, but started out a little interesting. The pain medication they had given me had not quite taken affect. So, when the doc inserted a rather large gauge needle into the base of my spine, I almost leaped from the table. You can imagine the pandemonium this caused: both for me, lying on my stomach on the table, and the doctor, who was holding a needle a few millimeters from my spinal cord. It could have gotten very bad.

Unfortunately, the doctor was too far in to go back and let the drugs kick in, so he pressed on (with my acknowledgment, of course). Personally, I do not blame the doctor for this miss-step and I viewed it as an honest mistake. At that point, I just wanted to be rid of this pain, so I could deal with a little more.

Normally, it takes a few days before a patient receives any relief following a epidural steroid injection. For me, the relief never game, and I continued down the spiral. Two weeks later, just after Christmas, I received a second epidural. This time, the doc gave me lots of happy medicine. It also helped that I knew what to expect mentally. The procedure went well, but only resulted in marginal relief for a few days. When it wore off, I was worse than before.

I have been told that I have a pretty high tolerance for pain, and I am one to agree with the people who have told me that. Do not ask me why I do, I just do. However, this pain was nothing like I had ever felt before.

Imagine an 8-inch chef’s knife, commonly found in most (useful) kitchens. Now, imagine that same knife… red hot. Take said knife and run it up and down your leg from the middle of your right butt cheek, down the back of your right leg, and along the outside of your calf. If you can imagine that, you will start to imagine the kind of pain I was in at that point. Several people I have met have likened it to the labor pain an expectant mother experiences during delivery. It has definitely given me a new perspective.

The pain was so bad that prescription of vicodin barely even touched it. For the next three weeks, I laid in bed on my stomach trying to do anything and everything to preoccupy my mind with anything other than the endless and intolerable pain, which reduced me to tears a couple of times. The drugs I was on ruined my short term attention, so reading was out of the question because I would forget what I had read after getting to the bottom of a particular page, and television was anything but entertaining. So, I turned to video games. Thank goodness for the Xbox and its hours of mindless entertainment to help me hold on to my sanity.

The one downside to all that video game playing was that because I was only sleeping about two hours at a time (if that) and playing video games almost every minute I was awake, my reality was distorted into this quasi-fantasy realm. Dreams became reality and reality dreams. It was a very interesting time. I am glad I am past it.

And so, on this day four years ago, my parents drove me to what was my final option. After loads of physical therapy, drugs, two epidural steroid injections, two MRIs, and some x-rays, I had exhausted all conservative treatments and went in under the knife.

Nine months of intense physical therapy later, I was released from treatment and back out into the wild. The experience itself was nothing less than transformative. The best part is that during all of that therapy, I grew to know the person who is now my wife. The world certainly works in mysterious ways.

The other side of this situation (other than the physical) was the mental side. I can honestly say that I doubt I could have come as far without the unending support of family and friends. They were always there to either give me a lift to my next appointment, to bring me a meal when I could not leave my bed, or to offer an ear when I needed to vent. I owe a great deal to those who gave so much to me during my time of need. Thank you, to all of you.

While I was in the recovery phase over those many months, the staff at the treatment center I attended told me that I was one of the worst cases they had seen. So bad, in fact, that many of them doubted that I would ever return to a normal life. They even asked use my MRI as a teaching tool since the herniation was so severe — the disk was almost completely wrapped around my sciatic nerve… never a good thing. Many were surprised I was even able to function with a disc injury that severe. Like I said above, I have a high tolerance for pain.

At any rate, as I sit here pain free and looking out my window watching it snow… in Texas, I was just thinking over that experience and looking forward to whatever life has to throw at me next.