Surgery #7

Some time ago, I was dropping off Trace at summer camp and when walking him in, I fell in the parking lot pretty badly. I got up, dusted myself off and went about my day. Then, as the days progressed, my lower back was hurting more and more. It was a different pain than I had experienced before, more than usual and it became hard to walk at a normal pace and even to kick my leg out in front of me. As the month went on, it got worse and worse and I knew that we were set to go on our first Disney Cruise very soon. I called up my old friend, Dr. Cook the chiropractor and asked him to work on me. I discovered when I was there that I hadn't been in to see him in over 4 years! That was great news to me, but a good clue that something new was wrong. He did the regular adjustment and it didn't seem to help much at all. The next day, I went back and he tried something called a "traction" machine on me. Then, at his recommendation, I got a deep tissue massage from their in-house physical therapist. I felt a little better, but not much. The next day, I had agreed to go back and on my way to his office, I felt really sick to my stomach. I thought that maybe it was because I just hadn't eaten. When I got there, he did the traction machine again. I went home, took a short nap and woke up with the worst pain I've ever felt! I was writhing in pain. It was horrible. I went back to Dr. Cook and he said something must be wrong, he couldn't adjust me when I was in so much pain. I just sat on his table and cried my eyes out. He called in a favor and got me in for an MRI the next morning at 5:45am. I was in such pain for the MRI that I just cried silently during the whole thing. When I was out, they gave me my results on a CD and I took it back to Dr. Cook's office. One of his fellow doctors looked at it and said we needed to head to the emergency room. I started to cry and we drove to the ER. When there, they couldn't get an IV in me, so they just gave me a shot of morphine to calm the pain. The doctor there said; "We are trying to decide if we should send you home and make you schedule surgery or if we need to call in a surgeon now." They ended up giving me a lot of pain pills and I met with the doctor at St. Marks hospital the next day. He would end up being my surgeon. Dr. Sandeep Teja said that my herniated disc had slipped so far out of my vertebrae that it was completely blocking my spinal column and cutting off nerves and causing potentially permanent damage. He said he needed to go in to remove the herniated part of my L5, S1 joint and the broken pieces of my vertebrae out and that he could do so the next week. I had the surgery on September 13, 2017 and when I woke from the anesthesia, Dr. Teja told me that I was a bit of a celebrity in the operating wing. He said he has been doing these surgeries for 22 years and the herniated part of my disc that they removed was one of the top 5 largest he's ever seen!
The most devastating part from me was that we were set to leave on our cruise on the 11th of September and because of this, we were going to miss the cruise. I was simply devastated! The most amazing thing is that when Kevin told Trace that we're going to have to miss the cruise, he replied; "That's okay, Mom is more importanter than the cruise. We have to make sure she gets better." How sweet is that? Such a good boy!
Anyway, I was in the hospital for about 3 days and out of work for 5 weeks. I have recovered pretty well, but I'm really ready for a year with no major surgeries and hope to plan a new cruise soon. When filling out the paperwork for my absence at work it asked to me list any and all surgeries. I stopped and thought; 1998 Appendectomy, 1998 Breast Lumpectomy, 2001 Lasik Eye Surgery, 2014 Radical Hysterectomy and Cancer Removal, 2014 Bunion Removal, 2015 Leg Cyst Removal and now this! Pretty remarkable since NONE of them were pregnancy related and 5 of the 7 were considered "emergency". Personally, I think 7 surgeries are enough for one lifetime, should be smooth sailing from here on out.....right?