So, after nearly a year of pretty bad pain in the lumbar region, the glutes and both legs, caused not only by a herniated disk of long standing, but severe stenosis, arthritis and nasty little bone spurs scratching my nerve roots, the medicos gave up trying an interesting variety of treatments and medications. All those interesting opiates not only failed to do much to alleviate the pain, but they never even gave me the famous high i was supposed to get. Bummer.
Finally went to a bone cutter (actually, two, one for a second opinion) who thought he could help. Well, the L4/L5 disk was too far shot to do much, but the laminectomy was supposed to get rid of the damn pain in the butt and legs, which was so bad could not sit to read or watch TV for more than about 15 minutes. Interesting little procedure: cut open the back, puill away the muscles, hack away the bones on the side and back of the spine to relieve the pressure on the spinal column, and to chisel away where the bone spurs were pressing on the nerves emanating from the spinal column. Oh yeah, and then closing up, I hope.
Sounded simple enough to me, so I said, “What the hell, go ahead,” even though they warned me it would be a 6-8 week recovery period. Well, when I came out of the general anesthesia, i found that the acute, sharp, agonizing pain had gone and was replaced by acute, dull, agonizing pain, but that seemed like some progress.
The good news is that they said i could get up the next day and start walking, and am supposed to walk daily, building up distance. As some of you may recall from previous posts, I’m a fanatic exercise nut, having run ten marathons, hundreds of other races, climbed dozens of mountains including four 14ers, the latter in my 70s. As I’m now 81, i’ve been highly pissed off at not being able to do any of this stupid stuff, (and having to listen to my wife keep saying “I told you you’d wreck your body if you kept doing this crazy stuff”). My only rejoinder is that I’d have been much worse had I not done all this rigorous exercise, but who is to know?
So, it’s been two weeks now since they sliced and diced my spine, and other than the incision area hurting like hell, the butt and legs are far better, so am hopeful that things will continue to improve. They have to, as i’ve scheduled the climb of Mt Everest for the summer of 2009, and that does not give me a lot of time to train.
Seriously, it is remarkable what the surgeons can do these days, and a tip o’ me hat to them all, and especially to my skilled doc.
::end of whine::
