ID:41755
 
Keywords: medical
As mentioned the other day, I've just now gone through my second surgery in under three months. Yeah, it's been a heck of a year so far.

Wacky coincidence

The two procedures were due to unrelated conditions, though there have been some interesting coincidences in both timing and physical location of these ailments. Both were on my left side and both started showing symptoms within a few weeks of each other. But the evidence in both cases suggests no correlation whatsoever.

Back in November, I started noticing two different problems: one ultimately led to the cancer diagnosis and subsequent surgery in January; the other I attributed to possibly pulling a muscle after going bowling for the first time in a few years. I'd had similar lower back problems in the past, though this one seemed more concentrated on the left side only. Still, it was merely a bit sore and didn't really give me any trouble with daily activities.

Fast forward to late February. Just as I was feeling almost 100% recovered from the January surgery, my left lower back pain returned with a vengeance. Soon the pain began extending down my left leg, making it difficult to walk, and impossible to fully extend the leg. Just as I had stopped limping from the surgery, I started limping due to this new problem. Soon I couldn't remember what it even felt like to walk normally, and I started feeling like I was 80 years old!

More scanning

My doctor sent me in for an MRI of the lower spine. Having an MRI done is very similar to getting a CAT scan. The three main differences are: no nasty contrast dyes, the MRI takes longer (at least mine did), and the machine is full body length, rather than a foot or two deep. This means that some people I'm sure get claustrophobic during the procedure. I had no trouble with that aspect, but it was painful lying mostly flat and not being able to bend my leg as much as I wanted to relieve the pain.

Music...

They give you ear plugs to wear because the MRI machine is loud. That's a fourth difference, I suppose. Actually, as I was laying there during the scan, I wished I had a microphone to record all the sounds it was making. Long and drawn out buzzes from low to high pitches; short, staccato bursts; all kinds of different repeating patterns; and everything in between. I could put together a pretty cool little musical piece using a recording of all those different sounds.

...And pictures

I didn't get a fancy CDROM of the MRI images, but I did use my camera to sneak a few pictures of the films, using a computer LCD screen as a rudimentary backlight. Here's one of the discs in the middle of my spine. The disc itself is a nice shape in the center of the image, and you can see the spinal cord and the vertebra structure below it.


(click to enlarge)


And here's the lowest disc in my spine. Notice anything wrong?


(click to enlarge)


Getting on my nerves

That's right, this disc has apparently ruptured, sending a good bit of its gelatinous material into the spinal cavity, where it happens to be pressing on the nerves going down my left leg. So while my leg was in pain, there was really nothing wrong with it; the problem was with the nerve in my lower back. This condition is otherwise known as a herniated disc.

Apparently the bulge here is about twice as big as most people get when they start to experience pain. And so by all accounts, I should have been in far more pain than I was. My orthopedic surgeon thinks I just have a higher tolerance for pain than most people. I think I'll take his word for it, as that doesn't sound like a pleasant thing to test for.

Since I was in some pain but not totally incapacitated, we tried physical therapy for a few weeks. This often helps people with smaller bulges to avoid surgery if the disc begins to heal on its own. But mine wasn't getting any better, so soon it was time to go for surgery #2 of the year. Tuesday I went in for a microdiscectomy.

Going under

I'm not sure if general anesthesia is something I could ever get used to. Both surgeries, I can recall being wheeled into the operating room and given anesthesia by IV. I can remember looking around and being generally alert, and then it all suddenly jumps to waking up in the recovery room. There's not the usual sense of passage of time that you'd get when taking a nap, but it's not exactly instantaneous either. It's a very strange feeling.

Immediate results

But like the last time, soon I was drifting back to wakefulness, the procedure all finished. Dr. Mayo came to my room sometime later and had me get up and walk around. The difference was amazing! No more left leg pain at all. Aside from the soreness in my back from the surgery, I was already walking better that I had been earlier that morning. I realized that I had to unlearn the limp because I was still expecting the pain when it was no longer there.

The gory details

Dr. Mayo also gave me a souvenir to take home: a photo of my back, opened up, with the excess disc material pulled out. He said if he'd known I was going to blog about it, he would have video taped the surgery so I could put it up on Youtube. Oh well! All you get instead is this gruesome picture:

WARNING: do not click if you are the slightest bit squeamish!


Fun with pain meds

So now I'm at home recovering. It's kind of funny. I'm already walking better than I ever have in the last 2-3 months, but I have this new soreness in my back from the surgery, so I'm still far from 100% healed. The most important thing is to make sure I have good posture during the healing process. Standing, walking, and lying down are ok, but no sitting for very long at all.

Should be a fun couple of weeks!
In my head I'm trying to figure out how that is a picture of something on someone's back.
The incision is only about an inch long, so it's pretty well zoomed in.
"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him. We have the technology."

No but really, I would never be able to handle all those operations. Hope everything gets better soon.
Sure, you say they're unrelated now and then the next season of House will blame them both on a tick in Michelle Trachtenberg. ;)

Actually, I've been finding these posts interesting and didn't want to comment for fear of spoiling them with poor humor. I was also going to link to the last post in Tech Tree as a real life example of planning in uncertainty, but I didn't want to trivialize it.

...Two things which apparently went out the window when I thought of Michelle Trachtenberg.

Recover! =)
I love how you get pictures of everything. Did you ask them to take pictures of the procedure or something mid-surgery?

I'm glad everything's okay. No complications.
I'm still trying to figure out where that could be, even as a one-inch incision. It looks like a boil or something being sliced into.
ACWraith wrote:
Actually, I've been finding these posts interesting and didn't want to comment for fear of spoiling them with poor humor. I was also going to link to the last post in Tech Tree as a real life example of planning in uncertainty, but I didn't want to trivialize it.

No worries - humor is always welcome (and some would argue, necessary) in situations like this, and feel free to link away if it helps make a point. I wouldn't worry about trivializing anything - one thing I've been saying almost constantly throughout all of this is that it could always be much worse. In comparison to other people I've known, my year so far has been pretty darn good.

BigBoiD wrote:
I love how you get pictures of everything. Did you ask them to take pictures of the procedure or something mid-surgery?

Heh, no - the doc just gave us that picture afterwards. I had no idea that he was going to do that, but it was pretty cool.

Now that I think of it, I have this vague recollection that the pathologist may have mailed a picture from after the surgery in January. I can't remember for sure. That one would be a little more gross, but maybe I should look for it...

Popisfizzy wrote:
I'm still trying to figure out where that could be, even as a one-inch incision. It looks like a boil or something being sliced into.

I'm kind of guessing there was some sort of sterile material placed around the incision that gave it that look. Either that or it's a combination of the sterile soap they use, plus skin stretched fairly tight around the opening. The incision is in the middle of my lower back, right about where a belt would be worn.
Hey Mike, take care of yourself, alright?!

About general anesthesia... I get the feeling that it's somewhat of a mini-coma or death experience. It freaks me out.

See ya in June!
The whole sitting problem thing actually reminds me that sitting for long periods of time, even when you don't have back problems, is rather unhealthy. It causes a whole bunch of nasty effects, including poor posture, reduced endurance, and the like.

So in a few weeks, chances are you'll be in better shape than the lot of us!


I've gone under twice -- once to have a pneumonia siphoned from my lungs, once to undergo reconstructive surgery on my elbow -- and I agree with you.

What I do remember is the general anaesthesia I got when I had the elbow surgery. I was in excruciating pain from the moment I broke it to the moment I wound up in the operating room. Suddenly, when the anaesthesia hit, there was this sudden lack of pain sensation, and it was the most liberating feeling I've ever had. I started to say, "Oh, that feels so much better, thank you so much" but only managed to say "Oh, that feels so good" before losing consciousness. Hopefully they didn't think I was a junkie. ;-)