How much more pain could I take? Is this as good as it gets? How much longer could I hang on? How much longer could I continue existing this way? At 43 years old, these were the questions I asked myself in June 2014.
My nature is such that I never give up. However, countless times between July 2011 and September 2014, I wanted to do just that–give up. The pain was unbearable. I couldn’t stand. I couldn’t walk. I could not lie down or sleep. No position, no pill, no massage, no acupuncture relieved the pain in my lower back and legs. Having had a lumbar discectomy at L4-L5 in 2003, I was no stranger to back pain, leg pain, and associated nerve issues. I was no stranger to that debilitating nerve pain, either. This was different, though; it was an intensity, duration, and lack of relief I’d never experienced before.
It’s worth noting here that I never asked for, nor would I have taken, narcotic pain medication at any point during this process. Many doctors offered them. I’d heard and read that others with similar back issues obtained some degree of relief via oral narcotic medication therapy. I, personally, always had very negative side effects from using them and did not use any between July 2011 and September 2014. I did, however, use NSAID’s like ibuprofen, naproxen and Tylenol®. They too had little more than a placebo effect for me.
I’m not sure what happened in late July 2011. I simply woke up one day in debilitating pain, and it never went away. So here I am: 41 years old, practically immobilized from the pain. I saw my primary care doctor. He sent me for an MRI. It took one month, three different offices and five attempts at an MRI to finally get one. I could not lie flat for longer than three to five minutes without excruciating pain. My inability to lie flat prevented the successful capture of the MRI. Finally, one location was able to support my body in a position where I could tolerate the pain long enough to get the MRI completed.
It’s now late August 2011. I went to the hospital the day after my MRI and personally picked up the MRI results. Not surprisingly, they showed there was nerve impingement, degenerative disc disease in the lumbar region, significant loss of disc height, and bulges at multiple levels in my lumbar spine. I brought the MRI results to my primary care doctor. He then sent me to see a neurosurgeon at a local hospital. Over the course of a month’s worth of appointments, the neurosurgeon gave me a full work-up. Finally, after multiple appointments, no answers, no direction and no relief, he stated there wasn’t a neurosurgeon in the region who would touch me. He suggested seeing an orthopedic surgeon.
At this point, it’s late September and still no relief. I went back to my primary care doctor. He suggested I see a physiatrist–the doctors that do the epidural steroid spine injections under fluoroscopy (x-ray). I was all for it. I waited anxiously for a week until the referral came through. I called the physiatrist to schedule an appointment. The receptionist said they were booking appointments for late January of 2012. It was September 2011! I knew I wouldn’t last that long. I called my insurance company and they suggested another doctor who was a 90-minute drive away but who, thankfully, was able to see me in two weeks. I took the first available appointment.
Upon examination by the physiatrist, he thought I was a good candidate for an injection. So we scheduled one. It was another two weeks away. If you have never had one of these injections, they are not the most pleasant experiences. Two weeks went by and I had a post-injection follow-up appointment. The first diagnostic injection did not work. It was placed in an area the doctor thought may provide relief. We scheduled another injection another two weeks away.
It’s now early November 2011 and I’m about to have my second steroid injection. When the doctor did the injection, it was like a bolt of lighting hitting my lower back and legs. Within minutes, when I could feel improvement and pain relief. I remember sitting in the recovery room when they brought my wife in to see me. I vividly recall sitting there. For the first time in months, I had no pain. My wife and I completely broke down crying like babies. It had been months of 24 hour a day agony. All the things we enjoyed doing – traveling, hiking, being outdoors – had stopped. It had affected our lives so profoundly that we were just so happy there seemed to be light at the end of the tunnel.
And so there was light. These injections relieved the pain and allowed me to avoid going under the knife. My wife and I were able, to some degree, to resume a semi-normal return to our life. I never forgot that my underlying back issues were still there. Nothing had been done to fix them. I never forgot that the light at the end of that tunnel was simply a dulling of the pain, not resolution of the fundamental structural issues going on in my spine.
This light was, not surprisingly, short lived. These injections worked to relieve the pain. That relief, however, only ever lasted four to five months. Like clockwork, I’d have to go back and get more injections. From November 2011 until May 2014, every four to five months I would go back and get another steroid injection. Finally, in May 2014, the injections stopped working. My last injection did absolutely nothing. Upon follow-up with my physiatrist, and upon my own realization that I had crested the double digit spine injection quantity (there is a finite number of these injections one can receive in a lifetime), he suggested it was time to pursue possible surgical intervention. I thanked my physiatrist profusely. He had literally saved my life a number of times. While realizing they were no longer a viable option for me, I had zero regret getting those injections. He referred me to an orthopedic spine specialist in the same practice.
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