5 days and Counting until surgery....and out of some medication.

Hi,

I’m sure you’ve all been waiting with bated breath for my latest bit of information and charming anecdotes.  By “all of you” I mean my husband guy because I think he’s the only one who is reading this.   He is contractually obligated to love me in sickness and in health and read stories he’s already heard in person, so that’s the way it goes.

My mother in law, Em has come to assist with everything and help my husband share in the joy of hearing me complain.  I’m the gift that just keeps giving.  I’ve been on a steroid medication called prednisone for the last week or so.  I took the last one today, which is really horrible news for me.  Since I started those, I have only had one minor back spasm.  While I’m still really, really slow at least I’m only extremely uncomfortable now.  A massive improvement overall, and now they are all gone.  That makes me sad.  Seriously, sad.    

Interesting side effect of steroids (other than growing a beard and mustache, which is coming in nicely, thank you) is massive mood swings.  Not like, oh I’m happy and now I feel blue, it’s I’m laughing (for no reason) until I snort like a pig then I start crying because I’m just a pig.  Just like that.  I have requested repeatedly that someone fetch me something glass that I could break, (there are some feelings of anger interspersed to add interest to the process) but so far no one has complied.  They know I’m in no shape to clean up after myself, so it’s really just self preservation on their part.  I’m too slow to go and find something myself, by the time I found something break-worthy the mood swing would be on to something bigger and better.  Overall, annoying.  Oh, and in the interest of full disclosure, I think the medication makes me smell weird.  So that is also awesome.   

I made dinner last night.  Anyone who knows anything about me knows I really love to cook.  I made the ever challenging grilled cheese sandwich, ah yes, sounds boring but with Muenster cheese, fresh tomatoes, onions, garlic butter, sounded so good.  And do-able.  Did I mention I am slow?  Painfully, agonizingly slow.  As I result, I burned all the grilled cheese sandwiches.  So then, the burned grilled cheese was salted with my tears of frustration.  Overall, not delicious.  If you look, you will notice dinner was not featured on my Facebook page.  Which is really one of the few things I use Facebook for, to show what I made to eat.  Yes, sad I know.  Crying now.  

Em has some of her own medical concerns and has done a great job powering through with my upkeep.  People leap to attend to my every wish and need, whether I want them to or not (not that I don’t really appreciate the help, often if it wasn’t for someone standing right by me, I would just fall down.  My balance is nearly non existent). I feel like a prize pony, a whiny, sad, lame, prize pony.  After an appointment with the doctor on Friday, we went out to lunch.  She held me up, I held her up, and together we looked like the slowest team in a three legged race.  Ever.  My husband does his best to keep us both alive, bless his heart.  His work is cut out for him. 

I’m still taking a time released pain pill called Tramadol and Gabapentin for nerve pain.  I can take Tylenol, but nothing with aspirin in it.  Tylenol sucks.  I mean it’s great if you have a headache, but I don’t have a headache so it’s just this side of useless.  Why do I take it?  Because it is just THIS side of useless.  As soon as it’s THAT side of useless, I’ll stop.

I hope to God this surgery works because overall things are sort of a drag.   Thankfully, my father in law is coming to help with the horses while I’m at the hospital for surgery.  So, that’s good news at least.

Five days to surgery and counting.

Fun with anatomy

Because stories are always more fun with pictures, I thought I would share my internal organs and bone structure with you.  Yeah! Right?

So, here is where my drama began, see that bright white line?  Looks important doesn't it?  Anyway, I thought it did.  That would be your spinal cord, I'm talking about that line right by the bony looking things.  The white line at the edge of my body is fat.  Really, fat looks much worse on an MRI, I made my husband crop the belly part because it was just too much reality to deal with on top of the whole debilitating pain thing.

It turns out your spinal cord ends pretty close to your rib cage then it branches out into a "horse's tail" it's officially called the Cauda Equina.  See isn't this fun! That yellow line is because " I used to be an adventurer like you, but then I took an arrow in the knee " or back, whatever right?  (Sorry, its a nod to Skyrim for those who have no idea what I'm talking about) Actually that was just the marker, they can slice the image anywhere they want so I got dissected in half right there in another photo.  

You see that nice thick bright white line of nerves comes to a sudden end with a big blob of black? It's right below that yellowish line.  That's where all the nerves that control all kinds of really important stuff, like bladder control and leg movement were squashed flat against more bone.  You cannot see any of the white nerves from any angle at that point.  Where did they go?  Who knows.  But that helps explain why I lost feeling in my left leg.  It could have been way worse, like diaper worse which would have been an extreme bummer.  

Well, that's the end of our anatomy 101 lesson.  There will be a quiz on Friday.

Post microdiscectomy, pre fusion surgery

Hi, I am new to posting blogs so please be patient with my learning curve.

I have a surgery to fuse my L5 S1 discs scheduled for October 4th 2013 and have found very few positive stories on the internet. I realize that they wouldn’t be performing over 400,000 (according to a quick Google search) back fusion surgeries a year in the United States if everyone ended up in debilitating pain and suffering terrible results. Unfortunately, it’s the unsuccessful surgeries that people write about, with successful surgeries resulting in people just go on living their lives and not letting the world know that it was ok.

Let me give you a brief history of who I am. I am a 43 year old female, I am not overweight, do not smoke, but I am not in great condition. I have an elliptical machine I look at regularly, it looks nice and is in “like new” condition. Don’t judge, I know a ton of other people are using their tread mills and exercise bikes as racks to dry their sweaters on too. I have 2 horses and have shown show jumpers competitively for years, but I haven’t for the last 5 years due to a change of location, rural Nebraska is not known for equestrian sports that don’t involve roping a cow. The point of this information is jumping horses often results in falling off horses, usually from a great height and with a fair amount of force. I have broken ribs, my wrist, bruised kidneys and so on and so forth. Probably not the best thing for overall back health.

I currently have a job I will term extremely loosely as a desk job. By desk job, I mean I have a desk. Because of my extremely rural location (population 8,000, closest WalMart, 50 miles away, Olive Garden… dream on) I drive huge distances to get to my work sites and spend tons of time trapped in various aircraft, from the 13 seat prop plane to grown up jets. It is not uncommon for me to drive 6 hours to a work site, work my shift then drive the 6 hours back home. I had begun to notice that these long trips were causing some back strain, but figured it came with the territory. I went to chiropractors and generally dealt with it.

So now the drama begins… On a Friday as I was getting ready for work, while in the shower I dropped a bar of soap. Yes, that’s right folks, a bar of soap. Not even a new bar of soap that might have weighed a gram or two, but a soap particle. Like any other normal person, I bent over to pick it up and felt a distinct tearing in my lower back, imagine when you pull Velcro apart, sort of like that. So, I nearly passed out, got over it, and went to work. By the end of the day, feeling ok but not great. Saturday, much worse but hey, power through right? I mean, who wants to waste a weekend. By Sunday, I couldn’t move, my husband found me laying on the living room floor saying “Emergency Room.” Warning: I am now going to slam small town hospitals so if you object, please skip the next several sentences. I could not feel my left leg by the time I got to the emergency room which is about 10 minutes away. I kept tripping over my left foot with my right foot because I didn’t know where it was and my husband was keeping me from falling down, which the doctor saw as I entered. I was in a fair amount of pain, but I don’t know what the “pain scale” means. I figure, pain level 10 the highest rating, both your arms are blown off, you have 3rd degree burns over half your body and you are covered in fire ants. So I said a 6, probably conservative. So the nurses and doctor are chit chatting in the reception room, we can hear them so I know it wasn’t patient related unless Subway is a new medical procedure and I waited nearly an hour in an empty emergency room to be seen. They gave me a shot for pain, and a prescription for pain pills and said “come back in two weeks if you aren’t feeling better”.

OK, so this is getting long but hopefully I haven’t lost you (if anyone is reading this). I went to my GP in another town an hour away on Tuesday; she immediately ordered an MRI, got the results and then promptly and personally escorted me to the Neurosurgeon down the hall. Surgery was scheduled for the next day, August 21st for a massive herniated disc. I didn’t question it, at that point I was in so much pain they could have said “we need to take you into the parking lot and shoot you” and I would have been fine with that. This is rural Nebraska, so I’m not certain this isn’t a standard form of treatment anyway.

Felt GREAT for about 3 weeks, started getting feeling back in my leg and foot and was happy as a little girl. Then I got a muscle spasm, not pleasant but understandable. I thought the nerves were coming back and were just really mad so they prescribed Valium. The spasms got worse until I was having spasms lasting nearly an hour up to 5 times a day that left me crying and immobile. So that sucked. Called the doctor and they said, that’s not normal, lets do another MRI and see what is going on. For perspective, the day of the appointment I had to get up at around 2 AM to use the restroom. It took 2 prescription pain pills, Valium, a giant glass of wine and TWO AND A HALF HOURS to get out of bed. Oh, just for info, that cocktail I just mentioned doesn’t settle in real well so then I got to spend the next hour throwing up. Good times. The disc had collapsed, it was just too damaged to hold up. So, lots of co-pay insurance deductible etc etc crap here that made me say, do it now or never because this is getting into the Ferrari price range.

So, that’s where I am. On the plus side, I’m getting some great scores on Skyrim because I can’t do anything but bitch and play video games.

For those of you who may be going in for back fusion surgery or contemplating it, I want to give you an honest opinion of my results and experiences. It may be good, it may be bad, but it will be something.

Wish me Luck
Enna