Finally my back gave out and it was time to have surgery. Therapy, meds, shots, exercise- all had failed. The doctor looked at my MRI and said- "Looks like you are going to need surgery on that back of yours". I agreed. Now I'm not so sure that I should have.
Everybody tells me, by this time next year you won't even remember all this. I hope so because I sure am having a hard time forgetting it now.
I had to get a fusion in the lumbar area. This included putting in two cages in my vertebrae section, srewing in some plates, getting rid of the old discs, doing a bone graft and stretching out the nerves that had been compressed for so long. Sounds easy, doesn't it.
Now if you take your car in to get repaired you might leave it there for a few days and when you pick it up from the shop it runs smoothly, almost like it did when you bought it. Not so with surgery. You wake up in the hospital after your surgery, tubes in your arms, in your private areas and drains in your back. You are incoherent, your vision is blurred and faces of technicians and nurses are coming at you so rapidly that your eyes are flashing like hallucinigenic dreams. You are told that if you hurt you can push this button so the morphine in it can mask your pain. That is just the beginning.
The next few days are filled with people waking you up during the night several times to give you the necessary meds, to check on your blood pressure and heart rate and make sure that you are 'sleeping ok'. During your waking hours you are taken for walks with your two new friends, the walker and the brace. It is then that you realize that one of your legs doesn't want to work too well. It seems heavy and numb. I was sure that before I came to the hospital that it was working fine. Twenty four hours ago I could walk fine but now I feel like I should be in a ' Cacoon' movie.
Finally they let you go home after a few days in the hospital. (Truthfully, they did an excellent job preparing me for my departure.) I get to take my new aforementioned friends home with me. My wife drives me home trying to be careful in our little car, but the back hurts anyway. With each bump the pain is magnified. We get home and for the first time I have to try to hobble up the small rise to the house where two months of recovery await me. The doctor told me that the recovery time ranged from two weeks to two months. I had hoped for the two weeks but instead got the two months. I would learn what PAIN really meant!
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