Chapter one in my back adventure.

I’ve gotten a lot of questions lately, about how I’m doing, what’s wrong and how did it get so bad so fast.

I’ve been wanting to write this since my operation, but the wooliness brought on by the medicine and just regular exhaustion has made it hard to collect my thoughts long enough to write anything.

To all you who would prefer this in Danish, I say try using either : http://www.microsofttranslator.com or http://translate.google.com . If nothing else, I’m sure you’ll have a great laugh at the translating attempts

A pain in the butt.

How about I start at the beginning (if you’ve already heard this, just jump on to the next Chapter;)
The Pain started small, as a cramp in my right butt cheek, on Dec. 11th 2011. I tried to stretch out thinking I had slept in the wrong position. But the cramping sensation moved down to my thigh area as well. Being fairly familiar with the Chiropractor, my first thought was that Dr. Nelson could help me. Over the next two weeks he helped me tone down the pain. But Dec. being that time of the year, his office was closed over the holidays and my pain got rapidly worse again. Cramps were now moving up and down my entire right leg and sometimes it felt like, especially my thigh and the underside of my foot, was sleeping, followed by numbness.

Now you might say, “Why haven’t you gone to the Doctor already??” All I can say to that is hmmmm… I don’t like going to the Doctor, never have, despite having the sweetest Lady Doc. C. Liebert. I’d rather go to the dentist (personally I think that says a lot, since I’ve had the dubious pleasure of being a metal mouth (wearing braces) for almost 3 years and thus had 8 teeth pulled out).

Keeping this in mind, I jumped at my husbands suggestion to go to his Physical Therapist (PT). So after Christmas, that’s where I went. The poor PT was slightly baffled by my incoherent pain pattern. This didn’t surprise me all that much, since my mother has heard something similar for years, Oh yeah we’re that special (again a dubious pleasure).

I finally caved, well actually I had to take my daughter to the Doctor because of a very persistent cough, so I had the sweet lady Doc. look at me. Very concerned she told me to go get an X-ray right away. At this stage walking from the car to the Imaging office had me on the edge of tears, not that I would’ve admitted it at the time

After that, the ‘freight train’ really got rolling. I began having the sensation I had to pee constantly and thought, “A bladder infection on top it all, that’s just freaking dandy”. Well it wasn’t. It was merely yet another of the ‘fabulous’ symptoms. Lady Doc. told me to get a MRI as soon as possible and when the appointment I could make, wasn’t soon enough in her opinion, she arranged for me to get one the same day.

It was hard having to lay completely still inside the MRI machine, while cramps were raging down my leg and my ears were being assaulted by noise like massive thunder (they let you hear music with a good pair of earphones on, but it really doesn’t keep out what sounded like I was inside the afore mentioned freight train in a storm of rocks battering the walls all around me). On the way home from the MRI my Doc. called and told me to get an appointment with a Doctor in Orthopedics. When I got home it was past Fridays office hours and I had to wait till Monday morning to make my calls.

Monday morning finally came and I started my phone calls for an appointment at the earliest convenience. First place I called could get me in Thursday at the earliest but luckily I found another office that could see me that same day. So off I went to the Highlands in Issaquah, where I first had to get the pictures from Swedish Imaging before I could have my serious talk with the Proliance Orthopaedics Specialist Dr. Jackman. Now Swedish hospital In the Highlands are just across from the Proliance building, so for any one else, picking up the disc with my X-ray and MRI images and walking across the street for the appointment, it shouldn’t have taken more than 5 min, but for me it took what felt like forever and left me, not for the first time, wishing I could take something stronger than a couple of Advils.

If you at this junction, feel outrage that my sweet Lady Doc. hadn’t proscribed me something stronger, don’t because she had thoroughly tried, several times, to make me try stronger pain medication. But since I’ve previously had a very bad reaction to Vicodin (an Opiate), I had no urge to try anything like it. My husband, Bo tried to be helpful in a witty way, saying that the nice Doctor was unlikely to give me the strong pain meds when I wasn’t in any pain, “Just so I could see if I could tolerate it or not,” but it didn’t sway me. Pain is one thing, pain while I’m also puking my guts out, is more than I can handle.

For me it’s always a little odd, listening to all the special terms used in the world of medicine. For one, because English isn’t my first language so any scribbles I write down while the Doctor talk, will be indecipherable, spelling wise, when I get home to check the internet. Secondly, because you get so much information, in such a short amount of time, that it can be hard to take it all in. The young Dr. Jackman was nice enough not to use too many Latin terms, when he explained, that what I had was a massive Disc Protrusion in my lower back (L5S1), and I therefore had to have a back operation. Sooner rather than later.

A disc protrusion is also called a slipped disc. The discs (the cushions between each vertebrae) in the back are made up of a ring of fibers that are called the annulus. The annulus is positioned around a center known as the nucleus. The nucleus is not entirely solid, but instead looks like gel.

In my case a portion of the nucleus protruded into the annulus, it caused the disc in the back to bulge out, pressing against the nerve canal. Because the bulge was so large, the operation was necessary. In a sense it was pressing the life out of my nerves, which in worst case scenario would cause we to become permanently incontinent.

To be continued….

P.S: Since I know from experience that the translating tools gets this one wrong, here is what a Disc Protrusion is in Danish : En diskusprolaps er en ryglidelse, hvor en udposning af kernen i en diskus presser mod rygmarvskanalen.