(DISCLAIMER: THIS IS A VERY LONG POST. i am putting it up mostly for marinda's friend ashley, as she is very worried about her husband possibly having to face the same surgery i just had. i don't want to leave anything out, so that her future decisions will be as informed as possible)
sooooo.....ok, i admit it. i only post a blog every 6 months, not a very detailed account of the important events in my life, i know. a ton have stuff
has been going on, not the least of which has been my recent back surgery (3/8/2012). also, getting engaged, but that's going to be a cheerier and therefore separate blog entry. most of you who know me personally know that i have struggled with back problems since i was seventeen. i ruptured my first intervertebral disk at that time and was shortly thereafter diagnosed with degenerative disk disease. from what my back doctors (i've had 3) have told me, this is mostly a hereditary condition. as i understand it, the casings of my disks tear open from physical stresses that would not ordinarily cause any adverse effects in most people. when the disks pop open, material with the approximate texture of cooked sea scalllops protrudes from the new opening. this material can compress the nearby nerve roots that project from the spinal cord. since the onset of my condition, i have had fought several rounds with these little devils pressing on my nerves and causing all manner of pain and havoc. when i first started having problems with this, as well as during all following exacerbations, the hallmark symptom has been painful, body-contorting muscle spasms in my right lower back. these spasms usually lasted only a few hours at a time and ceased following a few weeks of careful rest. i have always FOUGHT surgery as hard as i could. every time i had to go back to the doctor with my back all crooked and get a new Rx for NSAIDs or pain pills or whatever would get me through, i insisted on waiting it out. i wanted to just tough it out every time, because i felt like i was way too young to be having back surgery. also, i knew that the disk pieces had a tendency to resorb a little bit, after which i would feel better. and i always did, until about 8 weeks ago...
now, i had a really bad bout with this thing about a year ago. i went ahead and quit my job as a nurse a few months early (which i was going to do to go back to school, anyway), got a few weeks of rest, and felt better. i got better enough to start walking for exercise, which i have always done A LOT of. after that, i even started running. i have always been kind of a fat kid, and i have never run anything. i just worked on it slowly and over time until i could crank out a 30 minute(ish) 5k in a snap. i ran about 3 miles a day, about 4 days a week. IT DID NOT HURT MY BACK. my back felt fine. in fact, the muscles in my back were stronger and more toned than they had ever been in my life. then, school started. on orientation day, i had to sit in a chair for what totaled between 6 and 7 hours. the next day, i was done for. i was totally crooked, and i couldn't get out of the bed. i
had to get up to pee, but that's it. it was too excruciating to get up for anything not absolutely and 100% necessary. harvey had to get me in and out of the bed. he had to come home every day for lunch and feed me (in the bed). i mean literally feed me. i couldn't sit up to eat, so he had to actually hold my food up to my mouth. i couldn't believe it. i could run 12 miles a week, but 6 hours in a chair completely incapacitated me. i still figured i could tough it out until i got better. after all, i always had.
i did get a little better for a while. i could sit up enough to study. we put my text book on one of those things that holds music for choirs/musicians? it was too heavy for me to hold up. i muddled through like this for a few weeks. it started becoming clear that this was not an acceptable level of functioning for me, that it wasn't really getting much better, and then it got
worse. i don't know when, but i ran out of the pain pills i had saved from my last little rough patch. the pain got pretty frustrating, for lack of a better word. then, it got different. my pain had always been almost exclusively in my back and hips. at some point, my whole right leg went retarded with hurting. still trying to have a semblance of a life, i went with harvey to play D&D at a friend's house. the other players arranged the furniture so that i could play the whole time while lying in bed. i was hurting pretty bad, but i got into a position that was (relatively) comfortable. then, when i wanted to move, i couldn't. the pain was too intense. it felt like someone had my sciatic nerve in a pair of pliers and squeezed every time i moved. i wouldn't let harvey touch my leg. i wouldn't, couldn't cooperate with him. i would just cry and tell him i couldn't do it, and "please help me," and "i don't know what to do," etc. it took him (in real time) 30 minutes just to get me to sit up on the edge of the bed. now i have fallen headfirst onto all kinds of concrete and been hospitalized for a concussion on 2 separate occasions. i have projectile-vomiting migraines that send me to the ER about twice a year. nothing. that was nothing, less than nothing compared to what was happening in my leg. i can't describe it. there are no words. torture. torture may be the only word.
so harvey finally got me home. problem: i couldn't lay down in the bed; it hurt too much. i kept crying, screaming, limping around all crooked. we went to the ER about 3 a.m. they said they were going to give me dilaudid. i thought, "OH THANK GOD AND JESUS AND MARY AND ALL THE SAINTS TOO, EVEN THOUGH I'M NOT CATHOLIC; THEY ARE GOING TO STOP THE PAIN." for those of you who don't know, dilaudid is several times better than morphine at relieving pain. it's pretty much the big guns, all we can do for acute pain. FAIL. i kept waiting for it to work, and i knew that by the time i got home, it should have. all it did was take the edge off and sedate me just enough that i could lie down and stand the pain enough to go to sleep. when i woke up, my right foot was numb. bad. when it comes to a pressure on a nerve root, numbness in an extremity= bad. also, that same foot started feeling like it was on fire at night, which just added more suck to the situation.
that was the worst night, but i never really got better. the feeling in my foot/leg never really came back. i had to quit one of my nurse practitioner classes, because i couldn't go to clinicals. i WANTED surgery. i had not been able to stand up straight for 6 weeks. I was restricted to a pitiful level of functioning for a 27-year-old. i knew i could not stand to feel the way i felt the night i went to the ER
ever again in my life. i realize all of this sounds melodramatic. harvey is the only one that really knows, because he was there. i'm just trying to explain with clarity the difference between a situation in which i adamantly avoided surgery and one in which i was ready to beg somebody to cut me open.
anyway, i did kind of wind up having to b
eg for an appointment with a neurosurgeon. he got a new MRI. bam. i was scheduled for surgery a week later. there are 3 different operations that can be done for what i have.
1) diskectomy= surgeon shaves off offending disk portions to relieve nerve compression
2) microtubular diskectomy (this is what i had.)= same as diskectomy; doctor goes in through tubes, so less invasive
3) vertebral fusion= surgeon takes out entire disk. he places pieces of bone in the resulting empty space so that the two vertebrae that once flanked the disk grow together. sometimes screws and other hardware are used. it is preferable if they are not.
note: at my age, my doctor said that he did not even want to say the word "fusion."
orthopedic doctors tend to do this surgery through the abdomen. they are also more hesitant to do surgery for herniated disks in general. neurosurgeons go in through the back. they are far more comfortable doing the operation. my doctor had done surgery for my condition over 6,000 times when he operated on me. if you want to stay conservative and not have surgery for a few years, see an orthopedic doc. if you're ready to go under the knife and get your back fixed, i would recommend making an appointment with a neurosurgeon.
so i had the operation thursday. it is now monday. the actual surgery/hospital ordeal was actually not much of a biggie: one night, morphine pump, decent food. i can walk on my own. harv helps me get up/down if he's home. doc has instructed me to work up to walking 2 miles/day over the next 4 weeks. i am already allowed to drive a car for 15-20 minutes, although i do not. i am not supposed to take long car trips (with someone else driving) for one month. no tub baths x2 weeks. i am not allowed to bend or twist at the waist or pick up anything heavier than a jug of milk for 6 weeks. after 6 weeks, i think i will be able to do pilates, lift small weights, pretty much everything a normal person would want to do. the only thing i can't do is RUN. i am not allowed to run for 6 MONTHS. i am devastated by this. i didn't find out until the day after surgery. all the work i did building up my endurance for so long will be gone. i just have to get over it and start from scratch once doc gives me the ok; i don't have a choice. otherwise, life should be pretty much back to normal in 6 weeks. surgery and recovery have not, thus far, been terribly unpleasant. the tiny incision in my back feels wonderful compared to the way my leg felt 3-4 weeks ago. i have to keep meds in my system, so i don't hit a low point. if i manage to do this, i feel pretty decent.
