Lost Time and Elusive Memories

...and then one day you find ten years have got behind you. No one told you when to run. You missed the starting gun.

Having something stolen from you is never a good feeling. You feel violated and often scramble trying to replace what was lost. What does it look like when more than ten years of your life is what was robbed from you?

I was demonstrating a chest press machine to a client while working as a GM and personal trainer at a gym I managed over two decades ago when I injured myself. I couldn’t move at all and had to be carried out to the car in the sitting position I was in at the time of injury. I’d first gone to the emergency room where basic X-rays were taken, but I received a pretty general diagnosis: damage to my lumbar discs. With little to work with, I made an appointment to see a chiropractor and one to see a spinal surgeon. I was able to get an appointment with the chiropractor much sooner than with the surgeon, so I decided to seek treatment there first.

After a few weeks of the chiropractor all but killing me with his “adjustments” and me leaving in tears each week, he suggested physical and aqua therapy. Physical therapy never seemed to help and yielded no pain relief, quite the opposite. Aqua therapy seemed pointless for the same reason. While it wasn’t nearly as painful as the physical therapy and “adjustments” at the chiropractor, I never saw any difference with the aqua therapy. It was interesting to enter the pool twice a week in my two-piece bikini while I was surrounded by women who were 70 years old and up attempting to maintain what bone density their aging bodies had left them with. The contrast couldn’t be ignored and I felt not only extremely out of place, but a bit of hopelessness and dread began to slip in, growing with each visit.

After several months of rotating between physical and aqua therapy, the appointment with the surgeon finally opened up. He looked over my X-rays and ordered an MRI. The results weren’t good. Four fractured discs (L3-S1) and advanced degenerative disc disease, which answered at least a few questions I’d had over the years regarding my extreme back pain and lack of flexibility after a certain age. I’d been dealing with back pain since middle school and had trouble bending at the waist but chalked it up to growing pains associated with puberty and never pursued any medical advice. Not that my family could have afforded to take me to be seen anywhere, to begin with. Growing up there were long stints of time where my father would be in between jobs and insurance was far out of reach.

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So what is degenerative disc disease (DDD)? It’s a chronic condition where the discs within the spine continually deteriorate over time. This can cause numbness, stiffness, and pain, and is incurable. DDD isn’t a disease, but rather a condition where once a disc has been damaged it begins to leak the fluid within the nucleus pulposus causing pain. Without the ability to repair itself, this starts a downward spiral affecting other discs surrounding the damaged disc(s). This has and will continue to get worse the older I get and future mobility is always a concern for me.

Most patients with DDD tend to be over the age of 60, but in my case, according to the surgeon, I’d sustained an injury before the age of 12 months old and the rest is history. He said I probably hadn’t noticed any pain until my body went into warp speed during puberty and I began to grow taller. When I asked him what kind of injury could have caused such damage he said it could have been from something as simple as a sneeze or cough, or something more violent like a car wreck or physical abuse. I’ll never know exactly how I was first injured, but I’d already earned the right to say that I felt old considering according to the surgeon I had the spine of a 70-year-old. Add in the car wrecks, children, and injuries over my lifetime and we’re talking about a lot of strain on my ever-deteriorating spine.

Pro Spine & Pain

I found myself sitting on the exam table (now unemployed after being labeled a liability at the gym) one Monday morning at the surgeon’s office at the ripe age of 22, newborn in tow, having to make the difficult decision between scheduling surgery for that upcoming Friday or entering a pain clinic to manage my pain. After consulting with the surgeon about the types of surgeries they could perform that would help with both flexibility and eventually take away some of my pain I wasn’t exactly champing at the bit to be sliced open.

The surgeon explained to me they could fuse my spine which had a not-so-great success rate and came with many complications including having to return for repeated adjustments, the body refusing the material, and up to 12 months of bed rest. The other option for surgery included total disc replacement which required 6-18 months of bed rest depending on a myriad of variables. I had a newborn child and no family to help tend to the child while I would recover from either surgery so both were immediately taken off the table. The only other option I had at the time was to begin a regimen of bi-weekly epidural blocks at the same chiropractor I’d been seeing and a visit to the local pain clinic. I chose the latter and left the office that day with a prescription for hydrocodone to help until there was an opening at the pain clinic.

The epidural blocks were extremely painful and resulted in more pain afterward, not less. I would lay on my stomach and watch a small screen in the corner of the room which helped the chiropractor guide a massive needle into my spine. These epidural blocks are meant to relieve pain in isolated areas of the spine, rather than full epidurals that remove all feeling waist down as well as the ability to use your legs. After each session, I had to be helped to a chair in the “recovery room”. A timer for 45 minutes was then set and I wasn’t allowed to drive home until that time had passed while they watched for any adverse effects and feeling came back to my lower body. You had to prove you were able to walk by yourself before you were allowed to leave the office. The pain not only during this procedure but also afterward was almost unbearable. I tried to push through it, but after a few months explained to my surgeon that I wasn’t getting any relief and the epidural blocks were removed as part of my pain management plan.

B. Braun | CSE Needles

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