Strictly speaking, this background isn't even necessary for the rest of the blog, but I find the context is important. The regular text is my physical health. I have some notes on my mental and emotional health in italics. Read only if you wish. I am going to break this up into a few posts, if you are going to read them, it is important to read them in order. This is the second.
At the end of last episode, an unfortunate meeting between an elbow and a volleyball lead to me seeing a spine specialist. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.
The timing was good, because the Spondylolisthesis had progressed. Remember, Spondylolysis is the initial fracture, and Spondylolisthesis is a progression of Spondylolysis. It is when the vertebral disc begins to degrade and the pieces of broken bone begin to move. During that summer I began to have short moments of paralysis. I would be walking and suddenly my legs would go numb and go out from under me. I would collapse to the ground, sometimes multiple times a day. This was because the shifting of the broken pieces of bone had become severe enough it was affecting my spinal cord.
During this period of my life I was still struggling with my relationship with God. I took comfort in times of worship. During this struggle and all the way into college this was the only time I felt close to God, although I progressively began seeking Him more and hoping to get answers for my questions, I still only felt close to Him during worship. I even participated in my small school's worship team in high school.
And in the middle of deciding the future of her 16 year old eldest child, my mother gave birth to her youngest (13 years younger than my brother). Obviously there was some concern about how this would all work out. But she was an absolute miracle on so many levels. We had been worried about how to care for a baby and an almost-adult baby at the same time. But God provided a caretaker in the form of my cousin, who was an EMT and even later removed my staples for me so I didn't have to go in to the hospital to have them done.
It became clear in discussions with the new spine specialist that the surgery had become a necessity. They told me if I had the surgery, I would have no pain after three months. They also explained the risks of paralysis and death associated with the surgery because it was close to the spinal cord. I was so scared, but we decided to do the surgery December of 2006. Despite my struggles I was a straight A student, a shoe-in for Valedictorian. So my parents weren't worried about me missing school, they were more worried about me missing summer, which they knew was an important time for my psyche. So we scheduled it so I could recover over winter break and miss maybe 4 weeks of school. We had disabilities accommodation with the school, and had permission in advance.
This is what a spinal fusion entailed in my case. They would put two screws, spaced apart with a metal rod, into each side of the vertebrae fusing the vertebrae in place and apart, in place of the broken wings. There is also a small, hard to see cage in the space between the vertebrae because the disc spacing them apart had become so degraded.
Here's a view of something similar to my surgery. This is as minimally gross as I could find. Bear with me.
I wondered and feared what would happen when I died. I was mad at God. I mean, I still believed in God, and I still believed Jesus was my savior. But just like a child who still believes in their earthly father, I was angry. I wondered if I went to heaven if I was angry. I wondered how much unresolved anger equated to intentionally walking away from God. Remember these were the somewhat irrational thoughts of a teenager facing death.
I remember waking up from the surgery. My parents were supposed to be there but the nurse had sent them to my room. I was annoyed by this. I was also glad to be alive, and also very excited that it was the beginning of the end of my chronic pain. The nurse gave me a funny look and didn't say anything for a moment. Then, almost hesitantly she said, "You're in a level 10 of pain right now, this is worse than a gunshot wound, worse than childbirth. You can start the morphine drip with the pump by your left hand." And it was at that moment that I realized that the pain I had been living in for the last few years, the pain the doctors belittled and called small, had been a level 8. Every single day. For years. The nurse had been waiting for a reaction to the pain, or at least for it to register on my face. It wasn't likely to do so. I had been hiding a 8 from the world for years, I could handle a 10.
At least, that was what I thought until the gurney went over its first bump on the way to my room. Then I realized that a level 11 existed.
I always hated that pain scale. I was like...what the heck? There's 10 emojis here, and the last one is sobbing. I'm not sobbing. In fact the first one is smiling. I'm smiling. Until that day I usually gave the docs an answer of something below 6.
Stupid pain scale.
I got to see my parents in the room. There was a lot that happened in the 3 days I was at the hospital. The nurses were blown away with how much I was able to move and help them right away. They said I progressed unusually fast. I learned how frustrating it is to be stuck in a painful position and not be able to move on your own. And there were so very many painful positions. So many. I had a drain in my back, which is interesting. It proved to me I'm not squeamish about blood. I had so very many staples holding me together.
I had a nurse forget to bring me my medication, and I was reminded what a 10 feels like when you're not laying completely still on a gurney. And yes, a 10 is a heck of a lot worse than an 8. But it's still a heck of a lot easier to deal with when you can handle an 8. My dad sat up with me and watched Mars Attacks, which was the only movie on TV at 2 am (remember those days before DirecTV guys?) and is also quite possibly the most ludicrous movie ever made. Even more so when your LorTab is kicking in. (I do not promote the taking of pain medication to improve movie viewing experience, I do not condone taking medication in any way other than prescribed by a doctor.)
I also learned that the doctors had somewhat minimized what the recovery process would look like. They now explained that because the structure of my spine had been compensating for issues for almost 6 years, its correct structure would feel very foreign to me. I had to re-learn how to walk. Like a toddler. I would have to use a walker until I became familiar with my own body again. Which was unpleasant.
I was finally able to leave the hospital at the end of the 3 days. I got to ride in a wheelchair to the car. The ride in the car was pure torture. I hadn't realized how much we rely on our back muscles to stabilize ourselves in life. These muscles in my back had been surgically cut through all the way to the bone to allow for the surgery so those muscles wouldn't be stabilizing anything for awhile.
I had to sleep on the couch downstairs for awhile because I had a hard time shifting myself. I had to use the back of the couch to turn my body when I needed to shift for sleep, and rely on my arms to move myself instead of my lumbar, glute (gluteal), and leg muscles. At first I would wake up screaming from pain in the middle of the night. But the younger of our two family dogs, Phoenix, started sleeping at my feet. It was a comforting presence. I also started sleeping with my childhood stuffed animal again. If I woke up I would clutch the stuffed animal, and turn myself, instead of waking the whole house.
This is my actual x-ray. Those screws are over 2 inches long.
During this time my whole family was amazing, but I really want to give a shout-out to my brother Nate. He was only 13 at the time. This is a time when you should not spend Christmas break helping your big sister get to the bathroom, or bringing her her meals because she couldn't walk to the kitchen yet (a mere 20 foot journey) or watching her stupid shows because she was in charge of the TV. But he was such a trooper. He didn't go through his iffy phase until 15, so we were in the clear. ;) Love ya bro!
We slowly began to realize that recovery would not be as simple as the doctors had made it sound. To gloss over the next period of time, I wasn't able to go back to school quite as soon as we had hoped. I went back for half days and then full days, and I was still loaded up on prescription painkillers. I even went to my junior formal with a cane and still on prescription painkillers. I caught up on my work shortly after the semester was over and got grades similar to what I normally got. This was because of my parents amazing dedication, my mom going over chemistry and my dad teaching me pre-calc to catch up. We started decreasing the painkillers as soon as possible, but this also meant the progression of pain relief was slow, and eventually by summer we realized that I was not going to be pain-free in 3 months. The docs said, "It's not abnormal for it to take 6 months."
My mobility had improved and by the time I was starting the next year I was off of the narcotic painkillers and on a more stable regimen. But my pain level had plateaued. It was not gone. In fact, it was not much better than it had been before the surgery. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't experiencing the partial paralysis anymore. Which is good because it could have lead to full lower paralysis eventually, but the promised pain relief had not arrived.
And I had put on a ton of weight. From when I had to start being more sedentary that summer because of the paralysis symptoms to the following summer when I had been frequently sedentary post surgery I had massive weight gain of several sizes. I went from just barely the plump side of curvy to massively overweight in just over a year.
Needless to say this was a challenging time in my life. It was a time where my spirits were pretty down, with the shining light of my baby sister's smile keeping me going. But when the pain plateaued I became very very worried. And when the doctors said it might take 6 months for my pain level to go down I had a deep sense of foreboding. And my self image totally tanked. I had already been a kind of awkward teen, with unstylish hair. And my body type had never fit our school uniform well. But this was a whole 'nother thing. I didn't even recognize myself.
When 6 months passed the doctors said that in some patients, particularly those who had been dealing with the condition a long time, it could take up to a year for the pain from Spondylolisthesis to go away. I was not amused. That should have been in the file. I'm just saying, I would have appreciated a memo: "You may be free of your lifelong pain in 3 months, or it could take 6, or sometimes a year." I still would have signed up. Ya don't need to fib to get me on board to not be paralyzed for life. It's not a hard sell!
But when a year passed with no change in the plateau, we knew something else was wrong.
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