Today I will be hitting the gym later on in the evening, and I will post on how it went. But I also wanted to explain how crappy the journey was and what it finally took to get to this point. The question I always get asked is how did you injury back? The pain started around April 2007 and there is no specific point in time where I can remember injuring my back. The pain gradually started out and it finally got to the point where I needed to find out what was going on. First off I have to tell you the doctors/nurses that I originally had to see were HORRIBLE. It took 3 months of constantly going back to the docs to finally get a MRI done. My first MRI showed L4/L5 and L5/S1 were bulging and they were pinching the S1 nerve that runs down the left side of my leg. The first neurosurgeon performed all the required tests, told me what was going on back there; but she failed to see the anterior tear that I had at L5/S1. I found out about the tear from a pain management doctor after he performed a discography; he then suggested that we should start steroid epidural shots. Ultimately those failed. When you're injured in the USAF they put on a "waiver"; basically restricting what you can do at work so that your injury heals and it doesn't get worse. Even though I presented these restrictions to my supervisors I was still told to perform my normal duties. Even while on pain medication I was told to perform all of my normal duties. So as the months/years went by my back, S1 nerve, and pain level got worse. All of my protests and restrictions fell on deaf ears. I was referred out to a neurosurgeon down in Sacramento August 2008. After looking over all my MRIs and discography he told me that I was looking at a spinal fusion. In his opinion it was my best option at the time because the torn disc that I had was never going to heal and it was just going to continue to cause pain. That answer scared the shit out of me. The pain management doctor that I was seeing said that he would perform a neucleoplasty. It was an outpatient procedure and he would stick a needle into the discs and pull out some of the material to hopefully reduce the size of the bulge. After discussing both options with my wife Kate; we agreed that the neucleoplasty was a better option at the time. When the day of the procedure came (Oct 2009) the doc told me that he was only going to perform the procedure on L4/L5. I asked why he wasn't going to do the other disc and said that he couldn't do the procedure on torn discs; even though a month ago it was discussed that he would do both. The heal time for a neucleoplasty is about 4 weeks; after 4 weeks was over I was still in the same amount of pain as I was before the procedure. EPIC FAIL! So after the disappointment of the failed procedure I thought I could just push on through the pain. As the months passed and my mental and physical status got worse; I requested to be referred back to the neurosurgeon I saw back in 2008. He looked over the latest MRI and saw that there was no real changes from when he first saw me. The only other thing he wanted to see was an updated discography. When the discography was done I found out that L4/L5 was torn now along with L5/S1. After reviewing the result of the discography he agreed to perform the fusion. The date of the surgery was set for September 28 2010. So here I am now; I apologize for the lack of dates, and I hope that it wasn't confusing. From November 2007 all the way up to the date of surgery was how long I bounce back and forth from the clinic here on base, to physical therapy, and to pain management doctors. I asked the clinic why this took so long and the answer I was provided with was that they were there to control my pain and to refer me out to other doctors to fix my problem/injury. They do not try to help fix injuries.
And that's how all this went down.
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