Hello Link,
Do not despair brother, I nearly did just before my opertion in December 2005. I had 3 herniated disks (L5, L4 & L3), two of which were 8 & 10 mm respectively. I've suffered from back injury for 30 years due to a compression injury when I was 18, (jumped off a train trestle into dark water and landed on a submerged stone wall). In those 30 years I'd been through the pain, through the incapacitation of being stuck on the floor not able to move, (what I call "road-kill), weakness etc.
12 years ago I married my chiropractor. Something about the notion of a cost-effective partnership, but I digress....During the summer of 2005 we moved her office to a new location. I was installing the X-ray machine, a big heavy apparatus on a a sliding track, and I was working alone. The danged monster slipped in the track and as I exerted pressure to steady the heavy apparatus my back gave way. I felt the lumbar disks ripping, or at least the muscles in the vicinity felt the rip. Rather Ironic that I totally blow-out my back while working at the Chiropractor's office. This injury really scared me, since it resulted in my right leg loosing feeling and strength. Yikes!
3 months go by, I deal with the customary excruciating pain, then the numbness down my leg and finally become stationary with a loss of power and ability to control the placement of my right foot as I walk. This is actually cutting into my ability to hunt cause I have to look at my foot to place it on the ground. I recall hunting Ft Collins, CO that year and falling down so many times that my hunting partners would not let me out of their sight. They thought I'd become "road-kill" on the side of a mountain and get eaten by some critter. The condition was called "drop-foot" and happens when the nerve is no longer firing. Daily chiro adjustments, physical therapies and all the other time consuming goodies from the chiropractic philosophy just were not working for this injury. Time to get more seriously proactive in addressing this injury.
I went to another doctor for nerve conduction test, which showed there was alomost zero conductivity (no electrical impulses) going through my right leg sciatica nerve. This affected the muscles that control the strength given to the ankle.
Next was an MRI (x-ray will not show sufficient detail to soft body tissue) and even my untrained eye could see the impingement that the disks were making upon the nerve trunk. Orthopedic surgeon concurred and off to the butcher shop I went. Man, I was scared!
I had been stabbed on the job years ago and have a general insecurity about being cut open. Surgeon's scalpul or street punk's switchblade really didn't register much of a difference to me. I had the surgery to remove the scaring from the herniation. The surgical event was anti-climatic in that all went well and my pre-surgical anxiety was wasted energy.
I realized immediate relief once the nerve canal was relieved of the disk scar tissue from the herniated disk. The surgeon told me that the herniated disk had wrapped itself around the nerve trunk, in his words, "like a vine growing around a tree". As the scar tissue grew in place and then attempted to retract into the shape of a vertebrae disk it was strangling the nerve trunk, which resulted in the loss of nerve function. Doc said he ground out some of the vertebrae bone tissue to increase the size of the nerve canal and he pealed the scarred disk material from the nerve and snipped it off. Sounds simple and mechanical enough to me but I know it was the surgeons' outstanding skill and technique that shined through in the end. Post operation I was pretty happy to be walking 5 hours after I woke in the post-op ward. I went home the next day and started my recovery process.
I took a month to recover and then started physical therapy. Now the tough work started. It was like learning to walk all over again. I had to re-train the nerve to obey MY command, to get out of lazy mode. Standing on one foot was particularly challenging. I got stronger through therapy and now 19 months later estimate I have 80% of my nerve function back. A follow-up MRI showed that scar tissue filled in around the nerve trunks but they are no longer getting strangled by the offending scar tissue.
In the long run, I realized several good things resulting from the surgery. I regained control of my right leg. It doesn't flop around like a Psyserable Palsey (?) victim any longer. Psychologically I confronted and conquered a fear of being cut (residual from getting stabbed while making an arrest years ago). And it eventually dawned upon me that I no longer get the huge "charlie horse" cramps to my hamstring muscles that I was plagued with throughout my adult life, particularly in the evenings. That in itself was worth the price of admission.
Link, all I can really say to you and others suffering with medical issues is to take control of your own destiny. Become actively involved in the process, force the doctors and other medical professionals to explain in layman's terms what is happening to you so that you can make the decision about your own health care. After the surgery is conducted, after the bills are paid, after the recover period, it is you and your family that has to live with the resulting effects of the decisions that you make regarding your health care. If the relationship with your doctor does not feel right, find andother doctor. Try not to be a vicitim of the health care profession.
As for my ability to hunt, I still hunt every chance I get. And when I can no longer walk the hills and valleys then I will re-live past hunts in my mind. But for now I can still hunt and still hope that there are suicidal animals still willing to walk in front of my arrow.
I'll keep a good thought for your successful recovery. Keep us posted.
Topic: Back surgery- What to expect? (Read 777 times)
