Bed BACK and Beyond
Sharing positive stories of recovery after a herniated disc or other spinal cord injury. Join herniated disc champion CK as she has informative and encouraging conversations with other back injury survivors. From people who elected to have back surgery (microdiscectomy, laminectomy, fusion, etc) to those who used more conservative methods, plus all things in between, join our podcast, and let's talk about how life can move beyond the bed after injury. If you are dealing with the isolation and despair that often accompanies a serious back or neck injury, then you'll love being a part of these stories of hope and recovery.
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Bed BACK and Beyond
"My Tough Microdiscectomy Recovery: Why I’m So Glad I Had the Surgery | Herniated Disc Journey"
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And then I did a teeny little rotation like which should not have been a problem , and I did not have the language for herniation at that time , but that was pretty much what I thought had happened , because it wrecked me .
Battle with a Rose Bush
Speaker 2Welcome to Bed Back and Beyond , sharing positive stories of recovery from serious back or neck injury . Your host is CK , a fellow champion who draws on her own experience with herniated disc surgery . Join her as she talks with others who have overcome the physical and emotional trauma of a painful injury and discover for yourself how you can find hope and encouragement in recovery .
Speaker 3Hi Debra . Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Bed , back and Beyond . Before we dive into your injury , how about you tell us a little bit about yourself ?
Speaker 1Hi CK , and thanks for having me . I was an academic for decades . I retired in 2021 . I worked in the field of children's literature and now , since retirement , I'm doing a lot of home archival stuff like family films , working on the garden which fell into sad disrepair , and doing a lot of kayaking , doing a lot of short day trips to see friends see shows in cities . So I highly recommend retirement to anybody lucky enough to get there . It's been great . So did you write any children's books ? I didn't write children's books . I wrote reviews of children's books , so I did a ton of writing .
Speaker 1What happens a lot to people in those positions is that we develop really high standards and we're not sure if we can meet our own standards . So we're happy to cheerlead the people who are really good at it and write really important stuff .
Speaker 3And how long have you been kayaking ?
Speaker 1I did some canoeing as a kid and then the first summer when I retired I started doing some kayaking rentals in the state parks around here and I just really loved it . And then a couple years ago I bought a teeny little kayak that fits inside my Prius , so I don't even have to hoist it up to a roof rack , I just shove the thing in the car and off I go .
Speaker 3And I really love that . That's great , my husband and I . We just had our 20th wedding anniversary Congratulations and we went to thank you to Banff National Park . Gorgeous we canoed on Moraine Lake . It was amazing . I did not want to get out of that canoe , yeah , yeah .
Speaker 1And there's something I mean I'm not like a big whitewater person or anything and I don't live in an area where that's really a thing anyway but there is something about just the difference in sort of the texture of the world when you're out on water .
Speaker 3Why don't we jump into your back
Introduction to Debra
Speaker 3history ? When did it become an issue for you ?
Speaker 1Sure , in 2014 , in January which was a bad time to be out gardening in general , but I was I got into a pitched battle with a rosebush that was stuck in a trellis and started having back pain within about 24 hours . And if I'd known then what I know now and I'm sure a lot of us say this the trajectory of that year would have been a little different . But I went through PT and I went through sports med and I didn't get an MRI till about August and I'd been in a considerable amount of pain throughout that year and my job was always it's an academic thing , so it's already weird and we were almost literally under the radar . We were working in a basement , so I would like work lying on the floor or we had a little sofa . I'd work on that so I could do adaptations . But I mean , let's be real , it wasn't great . So I had an MRI in August and from across the room , I saw the degree of the herniation and said , oh yeah , that's not good . And at that point , oh yeah , that's not good . And at that point I was .
Speaker 1I had previously had a cervical fusion , and I want to say 2005 , about 10 years before that , so I had enough experience with waiting too long which , looking back , I did for this too , but whatever and knew the instant that I saw I'd already been waiting eight months dealing with a lot of pain . Things hadn't improved . I wanted surgery . I called around the next day because there wasn't really much in the way of surgical opportunities in the town that I lived at that point . The one person who did I'm not even sure he did microdiscectomies but he'd retired from surgery . He was just doing sort of surgical consults . So I called Chicago , which is the nearest big city , and called the two big spine centers at Rush and at Northwestern , and Northwestern wouldn't promise to get me in with someone who did microdiscectomies and Rush did . So I went to Rush and went in for a consult in probably got in in August and the surgeon said yep , absolutely , you're a great candidate for microdiscectomy , let's do it .
Speaker 1I waited till November because I needed to time it . Since I was in a unit head , I needed to time it so I could take the time off . So I timed it for the week before Thanksgiving had my surgery the week before Thanksgiving had a slower and more complicated recovery than I had hoped for . So I did a lot of working at home was on . Fmla really went back to the office starting in January and even then it was sort of short term and I had like a temporary disabled tag which was utterly pointless at work but was helpful in some other places . So it took probably six months to a year before I was really able to say , oh , that had been a good thing to do . I was glad that I did it and , as we will get into , there have been subsequent developments where I've felt even better . So I think there's different kinds of improvement you can get post-surgery . There's straight up healing , but there's also just improving your strength and your biomechanics , which can be as effective as healing in making you feel good and able to do stuff .
Speaker 3You're my first guest ever attacked by a rose bush , just so you know .
Speaker 1It's good to have kind of a unique selling point . It is it is no more sparring with the bushes .
Speaker 3Doctors don't warn about that enough . So , from January to November , between your initial injury and your surgery , what kind of things were you doing for your back during that time ?
Speaker 1Oh , heating pads and whining I had a wine .
Speaker 3I whining with wine .
Speaker 1Yeah , sadly , no , no , okay , I had a cane for occasional use , like there was a once-in-a-lifetime sort of memorial reunion thing happening that summer up in Minnesota and that was , you know , in a rural area , and I'm like I need something that says I am a fragile thing . So I wandered around with a cane and that was helpful . But yeah , I've always been a big heat person and still I run to heating pads every now and then . Something is an ice thing and probably a lot of ibuprofen , which I think you've been there that there's only so much ibuprofen will get you when you're in
The Path to Surgery
Speaker 1serious distress . But you do these things sometimes as an article of faith as well as because they work Like maybe I don't know , maybe I shouldn't stop .
Speaker 3And did you say you tried physical therapy for a little bit ?
Speaker 1Oh yeah , I did a fair bit of physical therapy Again . I know so much more about physical therapy now than I did . Then there is the standard , as we know when you have an MRI that shows a herniation , insurance wants you to do six to eight weeks of physical therapy . Some of that is just busy work . It's like it's probably going to heal here , be occupied , this . So the physical therapists .
Speaker 3Yeah , it really is .
Speaker 1I mean , and I really support physical therapy . I love physical therapy , but I think it's good to be pragmatic about what its goals are at certain points when it's presented to you . So they focused on some standard things like there's a lot of back extensions . In fact , I now know I'm extremely extension sensitive . I don't do back extension at all . So they kept running me and I'm like should ? It hurt this much . He's like , yeah , it'll hurt a little , no , it shouldn't hurt that much .
Speaker 3So it wasn't great physical therapy , but it uh but you check that box and you got it and you know it's probably not a bad thing .
Speaker 1It probably . I don't know whether it sustained any of the gains long enough towards surgery anyway , but it's not a bad thing . I don't know whether I sustained any of the gains long enough towards surgery anyway , but it's not a terrible thing to have some improved strength , like in the glutes and stuff . If you're going into surgery , that's not a bad thing anyway because you're going to want that . So I did it . It did not fix me . A lot of people most people get better in that time . Yeah , so you just say like eight months you're herniated disc pain .
Speaker 3So after eight months you're like nope , I'm still in a lot of pain .
Speaker 1Yeah , enough is enough . And retrospectively , I'd say also and this I think doesn't get factored in as much as I think it might when people are talking about surgery and a lot of the time here I'm talking about Reddit , which is where I'm talking to a lot of people who are suffering and I like to hang out and go . I did it , it went well , I'm doing well . Most people like that go away . I'm still here to go . Really , most people get better .
Speaker 1But they weigh the risk of surgery and there is a risk , let's not lie , and one of the risks is it doesn't make you better . But they don't weigh the risks of not doing surgery . They don't weigh the risks of keeping things the way they are . So , for instance , I have a touch . I'm 62 now I have a touch of osteoporosis in the left hip , which is the side where I had my herniation . I think the debility of not using it contributed a lot to that and of course , it contributes to other biomechanical stuff and you know it messes with your brain . Pain brain is a hard thing to get over . So there's risks in not action as well as there's risks in action , and they both have to be weighed .
Speaker 3For me it was a cost analysis of time . I was out of work without pay and there was no way I could go back to work . I was in so much pain . So it was either wait the eight months to see if it starts to get better or have the surgery , and hopefully it gets better quicker . And so I , you know it just made sense financially to get the surgery sooner .
Speaker 1I couldn't have hung on to my job for another year . I mean , as I said , I mostly wrote . That's a really fine mental process . That is much harder to do when your brain is struggling to deal with pain . So I was lucky that it was a weird job that I could hang on to during those eight months and during the month or two when recovery was going weird . But I mean , I think that especially when you're talking about microdiscectomy and not fusion , especially when you're talking a microdiscectomy and not fusion , so there's much less risk of sort of subsequent sequelae , like my cervical fusion is doing really well . I have a teeny bit of adjacent segment where Very little but people . I think the sort of common feeling about back surgeries I think comes from old school fusions and they're like oh yeah , if you have a back surgery it's going to make you weaker for the rest of your life . It's really not .
Speaker 3Yeah , 100% .
Speaker 1And also they're like if you have a microdiscectomy , you're likely to have a fusion . It's like well , I don't think it's because of the microdiscectomy , I think it's because of the microdiscectomy , I think it's because you've messed up your back and that makes it likely to have a fusion .
Speaker 3Right . One of the biggest anxiety factors for me when I was deciding on surgery or not was the number of older people , older generation people coming to me saying whatever you do , don't let a doctor open up your back . You know all experienced stories from old fusions Like no , don , don't , don't tell me that .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , it's . I mean it really has changed so much and you know it's it's still highly imperfect and there's a lot going on that I think we'll get to about what is on a scan and what seems surgically plausible and whether that's going to bring you relief or not . But this is also why , again , I'm going to go back to Reddit discourse a lot why why I don't tell people whether or not to have surgery , but if they can't convince a surgeon to have surgery , I'm like , if a surgeon didn't want to have surgery on you , you don't want to have surgery . They like to do surgery . That's what they live for . They don't think it's going to make you better . They have a really good idea of these things . So you know I wouldn't assume they're wrong .
Speaker 3Now , do you happen to know the millimeters of your herniation ?
Speaker 1I don't remember . I went back and checked and this goes a little bit to what I was just talking about about scans and stuff . I looked at my text reports of the MRI pre-surgery and then I had another one in 2020 , because I developed a lot of back pain in 2020 . A lot of us had pain in 2020 . And that got a lot better with really good PT . But the scan , the radiology support , is not hugely different , which is kind of interesting , is not hugely different , which is kind of interesting . But yeah , I also had a laminectomy and that I think was pretty significant because it was , let's see , yes , moderate to severe central spinal canal stenosis . But I vividly remember the visual of the standard sagittal cut of the MRI and I literally , as I said , was sitting on the exam table across the room . From the computer going , I can see that .
Speaker 3Yes , I don't know the millimeters measurement of mine . I can't find my old report , but when I look at the picture I think that that little thing like it looks like a little thumb poking out compared to others where it comes all the way out or it's going down .
Speaker 1Yeah , yeah , the ones that are ascending or descending ? Yes , that doesn't look good yeah .
Speaker 3I was like what am I crying about ? I was on the floor for two hours .
Speaker 1Oh yeah , absolutely . But you know , think about it what I , what I compare it to , is like dental work . It's like you , you get a nerve touched in dental work . A drill isn't a big thing but that hurts a lot . So you know , it's think of it as dental work on your , your spinal nerves .
Speaker 3So that's going to hurt Now , when you so . When you made the decision on which practice was it just based on who could see me fastest ? On which practice Was ?
Speaker 1it just based on who could see me fastest . I went with US News World Report and also it was going to be University of Chicago , rush or Northwestern , and Rush and Northwestern had higher rated spinal things . Northwestern just had the kind of recalcitrant scheduler who was . I said , look , I'm really interested in getting a microdiscectomy . If that's possible , can you schedule me with someone who could do those ? And she said we're not going to do that until we know if that's possible for you . I'm like okay , but you have to schedule me with somebody . And I was like I'm not going to have this fight . And I called up Rush and they were like sure , we'll schedule you with Frank Phillips . And I called up Rush and they were like sure , we'll schedule you with Frank Phillips . And I went to Frank Phillips , who ends up being the big cheese
Choosing a Surgeon
Speaker 1there .
Speaker 1And I don't know whether you've read much , actually . No , I take it back . That's the wrong source , never mind , but there's a Malcolm Gladwell thing about surgery and he's basing it on umbilical hernia surgery and he said you want somebody who just does this over and over and over again every day . That's what you want and that's part of why I wanted to go to Chicago and not there was . They have like somebody coming in twice a week . You know they're operating on a bunch of different things . I want somebody who's like . I have seen 76 spine herniations before breakfast today , so you know , if I was lucky , I have good insurance and have been fortunate enough that I can afford to pay for the slightly fancier one that lets me go and choose in bigger cities . So it was just the first one who said yes , we will go and have a look at you .
Speaker 3And was that orthopedic or neurosurgeon ? It's orthopedic . I made my decision based on who could get me in soonest . Yeah , Terrible way to make a decision , but you're in so much pain you'll do anything .
Speaker 1Yeah , I think if you weed out the bottom feeders , if you will after that , I think for most of us it's obviously super important to us , but I don't think it's that hard a surgery to do . I think when you know what you're doing , this is fairly straightforward . Sure , I don't think that neuro versus ortho matters a ton . It doesn't . I don't think it does either . Yeah , I mean there's a little bit of research that suggests slightly better outcomes with neuro . I mean there's a little bit of research that suggests slightly better outcomes with neuro . But I think that's also kind of the bottom feeder's effect , that when you get up to a certain level it's probably pretty much the same . Right , right , and it's also when you have a specialized spine surgeon , they're not so much a neuro or an ortho , they're a spine surgeon . That's what they're about .
Speaker 3Right , yeah , and was your procedure same day or did you have to stay overnight ?
Speaker 1It was same day . It's two and a half hours from where I live . So a friend and I went up the night before and she drove me back that night after I came out of surgery and they were like nope , we can do that , that's no problem , we will , I think , probably did some local anesthetic so that I was reasonably comfortable on the ride home . The one thing I hadn't factored in was that , you know , they pumped fluid in me in the meantime , so desperately needed to pee a couple times on the ride home .
Speaker 1So I used to live on the south side of Chicago , so I remember there was a Walgreens . I'm like can you get off ? We need to go to the Walgreens . Okay , fine . And then , closer to home , I was like I don't think I'm going to make it . Can we get off at this exit and see what we can find ? And I'll just stand in a ditch if that's what I have to do . And we found a lovely porn store that was incredibly hospitable , very nice woman , just charming , and she's like oh sure , use the bathroom . Beautiful little ceramic bustier with dried flowers on the back of the toilet , and we're like this is wonderful . If we ever need porn , we're coming back here .
Speaker 3Probably would have boosted your spirits while you were recovering .
Speaker 1I wasn't feeling quite up to it but , later on for later use . So yeah , that was it was . It was mostly negotiating the bathroom stops and I was very glad to be home and well , there were a few times in recovery . Standard protocol would have been a post-surgery exam , like within a month or something , and they said you know what , you don't need to come up .
Speaker 3That's going to be it . So you mentioned that your recovery was difficult . Can we talk about that a little bit ?
Speaker 1In what way I had what I think is not uncommon , which is some delayed post-op inflammation . Uncommon which is some delayed post-op inflammation . And my surgeon and I think this is not uncommon really likes to focus on the positive stories . He was also and I was perfectly happy with him , but he was not a people person and very wisely left the handling the humans to like his physician assistant . And the first week went pretty well and I was , you know , mapping how far I was walking . And the second week things kind of got worse and I wasn't super happy about that . But , you know , hanging in there and then I did a teeny little rotation like which should not have been a problem , and I did not have the language for herniation at that time , but that was pretty much what I thought had happened because it wrecked me and I spoke to the office and they're like we think you just irritated a nerve , we're going to prescribe you some
Post-Surgery Recovery Challenges
Speaker 1Lyrica and we're going to suggest you hang in there , suggest you hang in there .
Speaker 1But yeah , that was the famous Christmas where I was kind of butt , scooting my way around the house and sort of lying on the floor and crying and watching Poirot . So a low point . If again . If I'd known then what I know now , also about how it came out , I would have been mentally ready for it in a way that I wasn't Right . Right , and that's again . People I see posting are going . I had surgery two weeks ago and things are really starting to hurt . I'm like I don't know what the surgeon told you . This actually happens . Yes , it doesn't mean it didn't work .
Speaker 3That's why I started the Reddit , because I got hit with the two week surge of pain and then I think it was five to six weeks , another round of pain and weird symptoms and also many ups and downs .
Speaker 1The weird symptoms are wild . I genuinely thought I had developed tarsal tunnel syndrome at one point , because I'm like nobody had , ever I hadn't had pain on the inside of my ankle bone . It was like what the hell would that ?
Speaker 3have to do with it . Yeah Well .
Speaker 1I had pain in the opposite leg leg swelling .
Speaker 3My butt was cramping . I had to drag my foot .
Speaker 1Yeah , and it is . You know . Now it's funny , we got through it , it turned out okay . But during that time I mean one of the things I remember specifically is that I asked my surgeon I said my bedroom's things I remember specifically is that I asked my surgeon I said my bedroom's on the second floor Do I need to make arrangements ? He said never had anybody had a problem with stairs . So after four weeks I went up on my two legs and not on my arms and feet anymore .
Speaker 3Yeah , it's emotionally traumatic . Yeah , the recovery for a lot of us , not for everyone , not for everyone . But yeah , no , but .
Speaker 1I think the flip side of the generation is like don't let the doctors in there with their knives . Yeah , all the people are like oh yeah , my , you know doctors especially love the . My colleague had that and he went and did more surgery that same day . You know they're all . I went dancing that night and I was like well , that's not what's happening to me . Is this right ?
Speaker 3my brother-in-law just last year . He had a uh microdiscectomy after waiting 20 years , you know , dealing with the pain for 20 years . He he had the surgery on the front on Friday . He was back to his job on monday and he's a painter . So , like climbing ladders , I said how on earth are you doing this ? And he said well , pain has been my friend for the last 20 years , so it doesn't feel any different to me like I'm crying I mean , you do get different relationships with this pain , it's true .
Speaker 1Um , I find in some ways I'm actually less tolerant of it than I was because it was so stressful at that point . I have a better understanding of it and I can figure out better where it fits in the landscape . But I don't think I would have the ability now to go . No , I'll wait eight months and work lying on the floor . I don't think .
Speaker 3I could do that . So are you back to kayaking and things like that ? Oh , yeah , yeah . And how soon after surgery did it take you to start getting back into your normal living ?
Speaker 1Well , I didn't really start kayaking until 2021 . So that was seven years after surgery and my work was pretty intensely focused , so it took a lot of time . There's a lot of after hours reading and stuff like that . So my I mean which is my way of saying my normal life didn't involve doing a lot , so it didn't take a lot to get back to that . Um , I think that people talk about the year as a useful marker and yeah , I think I was pretty much doing most things by year . The , the 2020 back pain , um , where I kind of had another .
Speaker 1MRI and they said it's probably your facet joints . Go for a steroid shot , not an epidural , just a steroid shot . And it did nothing and maybe made things slightly worse , and the injection doctor said , oh well , that's probably because we did it in the wrong place . We should do it again . I'm like , no , I don't think so . I said look , seriously , there's got to be something else . Do you know a specialized PT ? And he said okay , I know this one guy . Well , this one guy who I started seeing in 2020 has a sideline in personal training training and I've been with him for the last five years . Um , so that is . It is , uh , an incredible stroke of good fortune that I know , not everybody gets to have Um , but I really thought I'd reherniated and he was like no , you just have no butt here , I'll work with you . And in like four weeks , I was like , oh yeah that's fine , that's better now .
Speaker 3Yeah , I don't think people realize how important the butt is for supporting the back .
Speaker 1We all think about our abdomen . You got to have a butt . You got to have a butt . You sit all day . That's not great for butts .
Speaker 1And then the glute medius especially tends to get ignored a lot , tends to get ignored a lot and mine is not very talented , so a lot of focus on that and also just the difference of having somebody to work with consistently is I think this is what a lot of people really want from healthcare and can't get is that it's somebody who is familiar with my body and who , after experience , I now trust but also can go . Yeah , that's not right , I'm not doing that . Are you out of your mind ? But
The Role of Physical Therapy
Speaker 1also , I think a lot of us have experiences with different kinds of treatments and PT and going . Okay , I put in a really good good faith effort and that did not help and it kind of sucked . So you get less enthusiastic about trying other stuff . So finding somebody who's really knowledgeable and really curious and intelligent and thoughtful and , to a certain extent , a scholar . He's a fellow of the AOMBT . We talk a lot about pain theory . We've done a lot of reading on that .
Speaker 1I'm an academic . I like that stuff . That's made a big difference in overall how this gets mentally incorporated into my life .
Speaker 3Now , did you try physical therapy right after , or were you prescribed it after your surgery ? Was it part of the healing I was ?
Speaker 1not . And I said are you sure I'm not supposed to have physical therapy ? They're like I guess you could . And I went and had some McKenzie therapy which seemed useless . And I'm not making a comment about McKenzie therapy in general , just for me . I was like , well , that's not making much of a difference . I don't know whether you've done any McKenzie , but that's basically sort of finding relief positions and if you keep going at the relief positions , that will help things . And he was always like has it improved anything ? I'm like maybe half a point , I don't know More targeted and perceptive focuses and strength and working .
Speaker 1It's also important to work with that window and I think this is a challenge with the sort of cookie cutter out of the box BT . Is it like you will do 15 reps of this thing ? Well , your body might only be able to tolerate eight . So it's like if you'd done eight you'd be fine , you'd be getting better , but you did 15 . So now you're having a painful day and you don't want to do it again . That's really hard to negotiate , especially when you're not familiar with how this can go and you're coming out of surgery . So I'm not . I think people should have good PT after surgery . I don't know what . The PT I would have gotten working down here would have been really good PT Some .
Speaker 3I swear by my physical therapist because he was a big help emotionally for me . Yes , the number of times I was scared that I had re-herniated , went into physical therapy and he was able to show me this is your muscles reacting and this is because your muscle is weak . And I could walk in and they would look at me and just say , okay , why don't we lay down and do some breaths first before we start ? Because they would see that I was having anxiety . So they were just so influential with getting me not afraid to move anymore . Like , use your muscles , it's okay .
Speaker 1That is huge and I think you know it's , it's understandable . It's sort of like I don't know . It's like if your first time using a gas stove it blew up in your face and you're like there's weird flames on my gas stove , it's going to blow up in my face again and they're like no , mostly they don't . Let me show you how to turn the knobs , and that's just . You know , one of the phrases my PT is considering using in his business is pain coach , which I initially sort of resisted and then thought , no , actually I like it as long as it's not the primary thing , because most people are like but I don't want to have pain at all . But part of what he's been so useful on is that's the same thing you're talking about is being able to say , yeah , it hurts , but it'll be okay . Pain is not doom . Pain is something that can get better . You're going to do things . It'll settle down . Pain can be . You had a bad morning , not ? Oh , my God , I'm losing a year of my life and I'll never be the same .
Speaker 3Now , how long did it take you to feel better after your surgery Physically ?
Speaker 1Yeah , better is a tricky term , isn't it ? Normal maybe term , isn't it ? Um , normal maybe ? Well , I'm not sure . I ever felt that . Let's call it six months . Um , I think it was probably because three months is when I was still kind of uh , sore walking from long parking spots and stuff like that and feeling weird stuff . So , november , december to January , february , april , may , june yeah , six months is a is a good is a good call .
Speaker 3I think , yes , that's that's what I will say . For mine , it was a six month mark when I looked at my boss and I said hey , I think I'm actually feeling normal . Yeah , yes , took me a year emotionally to recover . Oh , yeah , easily . Yeah , yes , that's great . So do you mind if we just touch on your neck fusion a little ? Bit you mentioned that you had learned not to wait . So was neck pain something you just dealt with for a long time .
Speaker 1I mean , none of this is your brother-in-law's 20 year thing . I do not have that level of patience , um , but it was closer to a year I was . I was trying to remember what the duration was and I don't Um , and , and it was a little bit similar in that it was the people I was initially seeing were kind of wrong footing me and it was like , well , you'd have to have this dangerous surgery and you'd have to have this other thing and then , when you can , if you're in a smaller town , get out of town and go to a big city . I went in this time . In this case , I went to Barnes and St Louis , which is a fabulous hospital health care center , and the doctor there said , yeah , you got a herniation , you need a fusion , it's not a big deal . Oh , okay , and they had a fellow who just graduated from that program who's now practicing in my town , so I was able to do that in town and that was a breeze , that surgery .
Speaker 1I had a two-level fusion . I stayed overnight I don't know if there even be overnight these days . They didn't do like the full neck brace which still occasionally some do . They just sit here , have a soft collar and then a couple of days later I went . I have a really short neck , the collar hurts
Neck Fusion Experience
Speaker 1. He said , well then , take it off , it's just to make it feel better , okay .
Speaker 3Um now , did you panic when you heard fusion , or was your doctor uh great at explaining the procedure to you ?
Speaker 1Uh , mixture of I didn't panic because I just wanted it over with . And also he did a good job of saying , look . Also he did a good job of saying , look , he was a good surgeon for an academic , he was nerdy , he liked getting into the technical stuff , it was fun . He said , yeah , you will lose some range of motion at these levels . Probably you have lost more range of motion from pain already , so you are not likely to notice a loss . And that was absolutely true .
Speaker 1The only time for years that I could tell that anything had happened was when I was backing up in a car and turning Luke over my shoulder and I couldn't get quite the rotation that I used to . And interestingly , when I started doing a lot of work on thoracic mobility which I super recommend for everybody because that's just so good for spine to keep that part mobile , it takes the stress off our poor lumbar and cervical regions Then I could pretty much turn back around and now I have a backup camera so that I think some of that was just being younger . But also in general , I think necks are just easier . They're so much less mobile than lumbar spines . I go on the fusion sub and talk to people who are looking at cervical fusions and go the fusion sub and talk to people who are looking at cervical fusions and go . You know , mine was really easy .
Speaker 3My lumbar microdiscectomy we'll talk about , but this fusion was really easy . This fusion was easier than the microdiscectomy .
Speaker 1Yeah , and I think that's really just a case of cervical versus lumbar .
Speaker 1Yes , Okay , I mean lumbar fusions seem like not fun . I don't want one . Right fusions seem like not fun . I don't want one right . Um , but uh , if I knew now and I don't even know how much of an option it was I would probably see if I could get an artificial disc replacement at least in one level . Um , as far as uh activity warnings , I mean it is one one of those things . That is kind of it . It's up to you . It's not like the the neck police are going to come and get you . But the surgeon said so , if you're a professional football player , if you were already making a ton of money and had a two-level fusion , you'd keep playing . You shouldn't take up football . But if you were a professional football player and had to have a three-level fusion , your career would be over . So I found that useful as a way of illustrating what the kind of risk and reward balance is .
Speaker 3Yeah .
Speaker 1So like I want to try one of those flow riders , the water parks have them . They're kind of little fake surfing things where they have water going up a hill . Yes , and my PT was like I think that's fine , don't try standing up on one . Yes , that's where . Yeah , if you bonk your head , your neck is not good . So you don't have room to spare on that , I'm like all right , that's fair . I don't think I probably would anyway .
Speaker 3I have talked to two people on the podcast who have had the lumbar fusions and both of them say they wish they had gotten it sooner , but they had waited too long because of the fear of fusion and since then they're feeling great .
Speaker 1I hear that with knee replacements which obviously I'm of an age where I have a lot of friends are doing this and I think people are less scared of knee replacements as a surgery but even then I think , yeah , the recovery can often be tough but that doesn't mean it's not better than things were before , which I mean I feel very much that about my microdiscectomy as well is somebody with a tough recovery and I think it sounds like you're feeling the same way . It's like , yeah , that wasn't fun , still glad I did it Right ?
Speaker 3Yes , if I could go back in time , if I had to choose again , I would definitely have the surgery again , but I would just tell myself all the secrets , for this is what you're going to experience during recovery .
Speaker 1Right , right , yeah , that you know it . It might suck for a while . You don't have to just listen to the people who are saying that you will be cured instantly and be a Disney character waltzing through the hospital .
Speaker 3Yes , yes , so do you have any remaining sciatica pain or flares ? I ?
Speaker 1do have some residual sciatica pain to sensitivity . I have stayed on Lyrica . I've gone off it voluntarily and the decision to go back on it . I tolerate it really well . I don't have side effects , it's all fine and it's not a super high dose . And this is something I talked to my trainer about is that I can tolerate a lot more working out and physical activity if I'm on the Lyrica working out and physical activity if I'm on the Lyrica , and for me the goal is what is up and around , what is up and doing , what is doing things that are contributing to my health .
Speaker 1So the , the , the Lyrica wins in that . The other thing is so I don't know whether you've run into the theory of central sensitization at all . That's Greg Lehman . L-e-h-m-a-n . Is a good person to look at . He has an interesting pain recovery workbook , but that's talking about
Managing Pain Long-Term
Speaker 1.
Speaker 1Again , I see some people on Reddit . I'm like I think I see a little bit of me there that the way I tend to think of it is like if your alarm system went off in a really big fire , once it gets kind of hair trigger , the alarm system goes off pretty readily and that's the . The central sensitization theory is essentially that that your , your system is now a little hyper reactive and that's . I think that's a useful way also of framing it . I mean , I could go on for hours about the , and this is a problem with healthcare professionals and not just patients , but with the sort of core misunderstanding that either we see something on our scan or we're lying . It's like no , no , somebody posted something last night saying pain is real and what they're talking about was a friend of theirs who turned out , um , after people had missed it , to have a tumor on their spine like valid , utterly valid .
Speaker 1But pain is always real . There's no fake pain , right ? It doesn't make a difference what your scan is . Your pain is real . Now mine might come a little more readily and that's where the Lyrica kicks in . It's like all right , that maybe dials me back to kind of a normal Esprance level , and that's absolutely fair by me . And also I think being able to move is itself something that helps with that . I think inactivity is so hard on the nervous system , so hard on the body , so stuff that gets you up and moving is so good for you . Sometimes I just think of us , as you know , like if you had a dog , it's like it needs to go out for walks , it needs to eat and it needs to poop . And are you , are you managing those ? And if you're not managing the going out for walks , what can you do to do that ? Cause that's really important .
Speaker 3I was saying it was like I had PTSD for the like the year after Cause .
Speaker 1anytime I would get a sharp pain triggered , like you said , and I would think I'm about to reherniate and I don't think it's like ptsd .
Speaker 1I think it is a form of ptsd um it's , you know , probably milder than if you were in a war , um , but it's a it's , it's a traumatic response and the other thing that happens and I think probably you were experiencing this too and may still occasionally is that we , we , we list . You know , it's like if you're a parent and you have a baby , you listen for the baby cry , um , and that . So you miss ordinarily , and there are noises in your house you wouldn't have looked for , but it's like I felt something weird in my leg . Is this an important thing ? Weird in my leg ? Yes , 10 years ago I wouldn't even have it , wouldn't have risen to the conscious level of noticing , right . So you part of the um post-surgical mental coaching journey is figuring out the signal and the noise . It's going . Yeah , it was really loud signal . Before we're back to noise , think of it as noise , right ? Yes , yes , your body made a noise . Move on , you don't have to stop the world for that , right ?
Speaker 3Yes , I'm a . My surgery was 2019 . Okay , so I'll still . I'll get a . My numbness never went away , but I only really noticed that when I'm shaving my legs . I got to feel the difference between the two , and then I'll get a flare every once in a while , and it's usually around work . If I had a tough day at work and at this point I'm just like I'll just use my heating pad , yeah , and I just move on . And and I don't think people were you know , people who are in it right now can never see them getting to that point , but you do .
Speaker 1I also think that that people who are in it can sometimes think that anything short of I will never feel anything negative again . Is is is taking a big L and nobody gets that in their life . I especially feel for the younger people who are , you know , like 20-something and this is the first big thing to happen to them physically . That isn't going to be better in a couple weeks , right , and that's so . That's two lessons . You're learning about this specific injury and you're also developing a different understanding of bodily frailty and what health and what wellness means , and that it doesn't mean nothing ever being wrong . And I'm not going .
Speaker 1I'm 90 , I'm gonna have aches and pains , like no , you know , it's just . You're always gonna have like that label in your clothes that's poking at you and this other thing and this hair pulls right and and the back stuff is part of that . It's just , it's all as long as it's contained within the . I can still live my life and I don't think either of us are talking about being , um , you know , brave little soldiers and working , biting our lips and trying not to think about our agony . We're just saying , well , that was an annoying morning and now things are kind of okay and yeah , god bless the heating pad .
Speaker 3So you've had so many nice lessons in here , make sure you have a nice butt . Learn about pain . Anything else you would love to say to people who are recovering or are about to get a micro disectomy ?
Speaker 1people who are recovering or about to get a microdiscectomy I'm trying to think of if I can encapsulate this because I think it can be a really isolating experience and I think that's part of why it gets scary .
Finding Peace with Recovery
Speaker 1I think forums can be tricky because advice is all over the map and some people are self-interested in selling you shit and some people are just kind of wandering through and there was someone last week is go you have a terrible herniation Like that's .
Speaker 1That's their vertebrae , son , so you get stuff like that , but that I don't know . It feels alone , but you're not alone . And one of the things that I sometimes think can be useful to think about , to get out of my own head , is that you do sometimes have people saying no one in my family understands this , and that definitely happens . But I also think there's the I think it's called the illusion of asymmetric knowledge . Is that we don't understand other people's pain either ? We may think we do . I mean , they're not thinking a lot because we're , you know , we're in pain , we're in our our head , so we're all in our own head , right ? So , um it's , there are other people going through this . This is a common experience , even though it feels maybe like you're totally on your own because your bodily pain kind of cuts you off from people , so you are not as alone as you feel . I guess I didn't think that was where I was going , but maybe that's where I'll land .
Speaker 3Deborah , it was an absolute pleasure having you on the show . I really enjoyed speaking to you and I'm so glad to hear that you've had a great recovery since 2014 . It's a long-term success story that people are always looking for , so I think they'll really enjoy hearing your story . Well , thank you for having me . It was great to talk to you . Thank you , if you are a listener and you have a positive story of recovery that you would like to share head to bedbackbeyondcom and click share your story , I would love to include your voice on the show . Once again , debra , thank you so much .