One year ago (June 10, 2014) - Looking back at my spinal fusion
One of my x-rays from October 2014
(six months after surgery)
(six months after surgery)
Good evening everyone. Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of my spinal fusion. As some of you know, since 2013, I had been suffering from moderate to severe back pain. The pain was to the point where I could not walk (no matter how hard I tried). I spent all of 2013 going from one doctor to another trying to figure out what was causing the extreme pain. I tried all methods of pain management (including the hippie stuff) and nothing helped me. When I got referred to my neurosurgeon, I had a lot of high hopes.
After extensive tests, and one extremely painful discography, I was cleared for surgery.
You may be wondering what the surgeon found during these tests. Here's a lowdown of what he found:
-Degenerative Disc Disease
-Early onset arthritis throughout my back
-Lumbar spondyliosis
-Spinal Stenosis
-Scoliosis (already knew about this one. I've had this since I was 11 years old. It's not a big deal)
*My L4/L5 discs were shown to be rotting and narrowing, so the surgeon decided to do the surgery on that area of my back.*
When my neurosurgeon cleared me for surgery, I was so excited and nervous. June 10, 2014 was the biggest day of my life (pretty much). My surgery started around 8am, and lasted for 3 hours. When I woke up, I was in recovery. It felt like I had only been asleep for a few minutes. I remember being extremely groggy and sore. When I woke up, my boyfriend and my dad were waiting to greet me. I was so happy to see them.
A few hours later, I was brought to a room. I spent the remainder of that day resting aand recovering from the surgery. My childhood friend Amy and her mom came by to visit me, which made be so happy. The next day, the doctor wanted me to try and walk. I remember being so scared to get up. When I rounded the corner out of my room and attempted to use the walker to walk to the PT room, I became very dizzy and pained. I didn't give up, however. I took it slow.
A few days later, I was home (with some lovely parting gifts from the hospital: walker, commode, ice machine, etc).
For the next few weeks after my surgery, I rested, worked alongside my visiting nurses, and did all of the things that I needed to do. The best day out of those few weeks was when I was cleared to shower without supervision. That first shower was just heavenly. I did have to be careful of my staples and incision area for quite some time. Visiting nurses had to change my bandages daily (not to mention my boyfriend had to help with the bandages as well).
I spent the following months in PT, where I became stronger and more flexible. However, during my October check-up, the surgeon found that my L5/S1 discs were weakening.
Toward the end of the year, I was still dealing with pain, but it was nothing close to what I experienced before surgery. In January, I had my next check up. My L5/S1 was not showing signs of improvement. Also, my L3/L4 discs were showing signs of wear and tear. They were also shown to be narrowing and sliding.
Fast forward to today. While I still am having some difficulty, I made myself get back into the workforce. My pain levels have increased since I started my new job, but I don't have immediate plans to decrease my work hours or quit altogether.
This Friday, I have my one year check up with my surgeon. This is an important appointment, as I will find out if the hardware has fused (during the fusion, they took a piece of my spine out, and fused the L4/L5 discs together with rods and screws). I will also be able to see the condition of my other discs.
If you ask me if I think the surgery worked, I would say, pain-wise, it improved my back in some ways. Unfortunately, I am left with residual back pain and hip and left leg pain. I am hoping for some answers this Friday.
Anyways, I just wanted to share my story. I've had a lot happen to me in my life (some of which I have talked about in previous posts), but the spinal fusion was the biggest thing to have happened to me in my life.
Do I think the worst is behind me? I don't know. I could be looking at future surgeries. I just don't want to think about it right now. My focus is on my life today.
I remember my surgeon telling me that he has never seen spinal degeneration to this extent in someone my age (I'm 32). I told him that me having Celiac disease doesn't help matters. I ended up laughing when I said that. I know for a fact that me having Celiac disease has contributed to my spinal issues. My grandmother had the same issues and she had Celiac (she died in 2007).
That is all folks. Just wanted to share all of this with you.
Stay tuned for less heavy stuff, LOL!
