Adventures in Spinal Surgery

My adventure began at 5 a.m. on Thursday morning when I arrived at the hospital for my surgery to find no one at the admitting desk. Finding this peculiar, I picked up the phone they had in the lobby to announce I arrived and was told to sit and relax and they'd be with us shortly. So, my wife and I joined the two other groups of people in the lobby and waited for 20 minutes or so before a nurse finally popped out from the back to start taking info from all of us. A few minutes after that, they finally took one group back and then another, but then made me concerned as a new nurse emerged from the back and called out the names of the group that already went back. We told her they had already gone back so she quickly slipped back through the double doors frazzled and flustered. Finally and attractive nurse (thank goodness) emerged and called my name to come back and get ready. Kim and I sauntered back to "Room 9," my lucky number, and I began to disrobe and put on those god awful hospital gowns, a pair of compression socks to ward off blood clots, a pair of yellow fuzzy socks to keep my feet warm and then they wrapped these warming pads around my calves as well. I was sweating my ass off within a few minutes and therefore did not cover myself with the sheet they provided and I'm sure I flashed a couple of nurses as they walked by, seeing as how I had to go commando.

Is Surgery Necessary?

After all of the formalities were taken care of and having to answer my name, birth date and procedure I was there for 20 times, the frazzled nurse from earlier appeared once again to set up my IV. She and I started small talk while she was getting things ready and mentioned it was a long night. I took that opening and asked her what had made it so long. She told me that they had two patients come early that morning, one didn't make it and the other was in ICU. I started having second thoughts as to whether this surgery was really necessary at that point. I decided it was.

My adventure continued when my surgery was supposed to start at 7:30 a.m. and was pushed back because of the earlier events and because I had one other patient ahead of me that needed a shunt put in. Finally at 12:30 p.m., the anesthesiologists started to show up and my surgical nurse (who happened to be the first hot nurse I ever had) all began prepping me for surgery. Seeing as how time was creeping along earlier that morning, from this point on it whipped by. The next thing I knew, the anesthesiologist put something in my IV and I had enough time to kiss my wife and tell her I loved her, but I don't remember being wheeled out of the room at all. That must have been some good stuff!

The Injury

I woke up later hearing someone calling out my name and telling me to wake up. It sounded as if it were in the distance or hollering down a corridor at me. I finally began to open my eyes and move about only to have a reaction to the medicine they gave me and began to vomit, so I had to stay another hour. A little later when I was finally able to comprehend what was going on, my wife was able to drop some knowledge on me that she received from the surgeon. The injury I had, the herniated disk, happened anywhere from 3-5 years ago. He told her it was not a fresh injury and there's no way it only happened six months ago. Which means all the back pain I dealt with the last few years and trained through and around, was at some point missed by the "back specialist" that I saw at Jewett Orthopaedic. The surgeon said that there was very little disk tissue that protruded and that there was a lot of calcification, so he could only do so much without damaging the nerves and such in the surrounding area. Therefore, he made as much room as he could to alleviate some pressure on the nerve and give me some relief, but he said it would be four to six weeks before I would feel that relief.

What to Expect

Now, this is where I stand for the time being. Kim was not told by the doc that I should stop lifting or anything of the such. I've been able to get up and walk around without too much difficulty, but did push it a bit too much yesterday and paid for it last night as I headed to bed. I have a follow-up visit on May 7, and hope to find out more about the procedure then and will talk to him in length about what I can expect from this and which direction I should take. I believe that since I was training with it like this these last couple of years, at least I should be able to continue without a problem.

By the way, I typed all this up while being high on Percocet and Soma. So if I rambled...I do apologize.