How It Started

November 2002

I was just walking around, minding my own business, shopping with my husband at Syms one evening, when all of a sudden, I couldn’t move my legs. My back hurt terribly. I found myself shuffling just to get back on the main level and near the entrance. I asked my husband to check out his merchandise without me, two nice new suits for his new post-retirement state job, and I’d meet him at our car. I figured if I could continue to shuffle out the door and into the parking lot, I’d be okay. I looked and felt like an old lady. It was dark out, so I hoped nobody saw what a hard time I was having just walking to my car. When I got to there, I reached into my purse, got a Lortab, broke it in half and swallowed it down with my ever-present bottle of Poland Spring water.

*****

I’d always had some sort of lower back pain, ever since I was a teenager, but tonight this was much more acute. Something was wrong and I knew it. Lucky for me I had a few Lortab left from my shoulder surgery the year before. Tonight I needed it. Just sitting in the car actually helped a great deal, too, and I wondered why that was. I’d find out later that this was very typical of lumbar stenosis.

I went home, got ready for bed and the pain eased up. Just being off my feet helped, and so did the half Lortab I swallowed in the car an hour ago. I was okay by the next morning and life went on.

_________________________

February, 2003

My back continued to bother me, but one day, all of a sudden, I couldn’t walk or stand for more than a few minutes without getting wrenching, cramping pain in my back, my butt and my outer thighs. One morning it was particularly bad, and I called my ortho doctor. I wanted to come in right away. This was bizarre, and I was admittedly a bit scared. He examined me, watched me try to walk across his examining room, ordered an MRI, did X rays at his office, which confirmed Spondylolisthesis and never-before diagnosed left lumbar scoliosis. He then gave me a shot of something in my lower back to ease the pain. It helped a little only.

My MRI was very interesting indeed and a source of much Internet research over the next few weeks once I got a copy of the report. It seems I had moderate stenosis at L4-L5, a congenital transitional vertebrae (an “extra” vertebrae, as it were … oh, goody, an extra back bone), degenerative disc disease at the L5-S1 level, and what looked to be a synovial cyst of about 1.5 centimeters at L4-L5 projecting into the spinal canal and moderately compressing the right side of the dural sac. My ortho doctor suggested epidural injections to help with the back pain and butt cramping. He also said I may need surgery eventually, at least to get that synovial cyst out of there.

My husband’s chiropractor reviewed my MRI and X rays and conceded that I did, indeed, need surgery. He could do nothing for me and said so. An honest chiropractor who concedes that everything from chicken pox to a broken neck can’t be fixed with chiropractic. How do you like that?

_________________________

March, 2003

My regular ortho man sent me for a series of epidural injections. He told me that if the first one worked, we’d do the whole series, but if it didn’t, we shouldn’t bother with the other two. I saw a wonderful anesthesiologist at the local teaching hospital’s Pain Management Center. My ortho doctor insisted that he be the one to do my injections, and he really did make it painless. I’d read so much online about the problems and pain these injections cause, but I can truly say that all three injections (two epidurals, one facet joint) went very well … and they did help, but only for a little while.

My ortho doctor was nearing retirement age, but still came into the office every day and did some surgery at the local hospital. He’d done my right shoulder surgery a year before and was treating me still for a recurrent left knee problem and later, a left shoulder problem. He told me outright hat he would not do my surgery if we decided to go that route. He referred me to a young ortho doctor at his practice who specialized in backs. One visit and I was not impressed by the guy, so I started my quest for a surgeon.

One of my first stops was my pediatrist, a doctor who I think is brilliant in his chosen field and dedicated to good medicine. I am always impressed by his breathe of knowledge on the human body. Years before, he had asked me to have an MRI of my lumbar spine because he thought there was something funny going on there, based soley on my foot problems. I didn’t go for that MRI then, but I should have. He was right on about the issues in my lumbar spine.

Anyway, I showed him my test results and he said “See? I told you so.” Then, he said “Don’t screw around with this. Have it taken care of.” I told him about my situation with my regular ortho doctor, and he told me that if he or any member of his family needed back surgery, he’d go right to the neurological team at University Hospital in Newark, New Jersey. He gave me the name of the chief surgeon down there, but I discovered when I called that he handled brain tumors in adults and children. When I explained my problem, I was directed to Dr Robert Heary, and I arranged for an appointment. I admit that I was excited that I would be seeing an expert and maybe someone who could really help me with my back. Finally, after years of suffering, but reading that 90% of the population suffers from back pain at least once in their lives, I never wanted to complain too much. Now, I really did need help.

I gathered all of my Xrays and my MRI slides and report, and got ready to see Dr Heary. My first appointment was on December 30th. Happy New Year.

_________________________


December 30, 2003

Dr Heary was an easy to talk to, down to earth-type guy who looked at the reports, X rays and MRI of my back and admitted that my back “was a mess,” as my husband said to him. We talked for a long while, and my husband, who accompanied me to the office, liked him immediately. This was a good sign, since my husband doesn’t like or trust many people. That he would think so positively of someone we just met who may be operating on my back was encouraging.

Dr Heary wanted me to get flexion X-rays so he could see the extent of the slippage of my lower lumbar vertebrae, so I had that done within the next few days. He told me he’d call me so we could discuss the outcome or have me come into the office. When he called, he asked me to come into the office. Not a good sign.

We had talked about the possibility of doing “small surgery,” ie a lamenectomy for the stenosis, as Dr Heary explained that what happened to me in March of the following year (the strong cramping of my back and leg, not being able to walk or stand for more than a few minutes) could likey happen to me again, and I’d have another “hot back,” as he put it. The worst case scenario was a “big surgery”, a lamenectomy along with a three level fusion, three vertebrae and two disc spaces. It turns out that this is what I was going to need. I guess that’s why he wanted me back down at his office, so he could break the news in person.

The flexion Xrays showed my lower back to be too unstable for just the “small surgey.” We agreed that when my quality of life got to be so bad that I’d need the surgery to live well, I’d get it done. Dr Heary said it was not an easy surgery to get through and the recovery was long. He went on to explain what it was all about and what the post-surgery would be like, including a brace for at least three months until I started to fuse. He wouldn’t take bone from my hip, but instead would use bone tissue from my spine as he did the lamenectomy. Good. I’d heard that the hip incision was sometimes worse, pain-wise and with general healing time, than the fusion itself.

Dr. Heary asked me if I’d seen a big, tall man leaving the waiting room area before I came in to see him. I had noticed him because he had on a back brace like I’d seen when I was doing research online. Heary explained that he had done failed back surgery and re-fused him just three weeks earlier. Whoever this guy was, he looked to be in good shape to me, especially three weeks after going through what I was about to go through at some point soon. It made me feel better, I admit. I admit that I was already beginning to think about surgery for myself in the fall.

I saw Dr Heary several more times, just for follow-up and management, until I called for an appointment a month before my next scheduled one in September of 2004. My back pain had gotten so bad, I was ready to say yes to surgery. It wasn’t another stenotic episode, just a bone-on-bone pain almost constantly. I guess that’s the feeling of vertebrae slipping in earnest, one on the other. I just couldn't get comfortable. I'd stand and I hurt. I'd walk and I'd hurt. Same thing when I sat down. The only relief I got was when I was lying on my side, curled up in a ball.

_________________________

August, 2004

Dr Heary’s nurse/practitioner, Peg, examined me and asked questions, as usual, before the Doctor came in to talk with me. She asked “it’s time?’ I knew what she meant, and I replied that, yes, I wanted the surgery. I couldn’t live like this anymore. My back was becoming a quality of life issue, Big Time.

Then, Dr Heary talked with me, asked if I had any questions, as we had covered many points about this surgery in past visits. We set the surgery date for October 25, a Monday. He asked if we could maybe do it sooner, but I had commitments through September and he was getting married on October 1st. So, October 25th it was to be. Now, I had a date to circle on my calendar, a date when the pain would begin to end for good.

I asked Heary if there was something I could do in the meantime, maybe another epidural for the pain or physical therapy to strengthen my back before my surgery, so he wrote me a requisition for PT and would have conceded to another epidural, although he said he usually reserved those for elderly patients who are not good surgical risks. I also got a prescription for Darvocet 100, which, it turned out, only subdued my pain, but did help me sleep. 'Gave me a headache the morning after, though.

I talked more with Peg, who will set me up to donate two pints of my own blood for my surgery during the month of October and will send out a prescription for an iron supplement.

I started my PT the following week. Light exercises for my stomach and back, plus sessions on the TENS unit. Until an electrode burned my back in one spot, those sessions felt good.

_________________________

September 19, 2004

As I prepared for my surgery, I booked a cruise, something quick and easy out of Bayonne, NJ, on a ship I was not familiar with but wanted to see. I figured it would take my mind off my upcoming surgery and it would also be the last chance in a long time to do a cruise, since I'd be in a brace for three months and healing for who knows how long?

So, off I went on the Voyager of the Seas!

P.S. - That photo (above) of Hans and me is from one of our trips on the QE2, NOT from the Voyager of the Seas. It's one of my favorite photos of us.