For the last almost eleven years, I’ve suffered with a lovely little thing called Degenerative Disk Disease. The funny thing is… Its not even a disease. It is just a condition where for whatever reason, whether it be accident, injury or old age, your disks have begun to wear out. Most people live their whole lives without even knowing they are affected by this disorder. Under normal circumstances, disks actually hurt less as we age. The proteins that normally cause inflammation break down. Without the inflammation there is no pressure on the nerves, so the pain we may have experienced in our younger lives seems to “heal up”. It really doesn’t. The disk just becomes harder and loses its ability to swell and press on tender nerve endings.
Cases like mine, however, are a bit different. The disk herniates and/or ruptures. Think of it this way. The disk is like a big jelly donut. The interior, the jelly, is a viscus fluid that allows the spine to shift and move. The outside would be like the dough of the donut. The difference is the edges of this donut are wrapped in a very strong set of rubber bands that hold it all together This donut is sandwiched between two vertabrae, kind of like the filling in an Oreo cookie. In my case, those rubber bands are weakened or broken to the point that the jelly has pushed out causing misalignment in the vertebrae on either side. In other words, the two cookie pieces don’t sit level or at a proper distance from each other. This causes nerves to become pinched causing pain and/or weakness of the extremities. In my case, my right leg. I’m also about half to three quarters of an inch shorter than I used to be.
Living with Chronic Pain
If you have never had chronic pain, I hope you never find out what I am about to write about. Chronic pain is persistent pain that can be anything from dull continuous aching to sharp fiery pain that can travel through the body. It never truly goes away. Some days it’s better than others, but its always there nagging at your body.
I’ve lived for almost eleven years with this kind of pain. I’ve had people say “You don’t look like you are in pain.” Just like anything that you do over and over in life, you kind of get used to it. You learn to do things differently so that the pain doesn’t flare up. On days when you can’t control the flare, you learn to put on a brave face and go about what you have to do. This kind of pain doesn’t go away easily just by laying down and taking a nap. Sometimes a nap does help, but most of the time the nap is more about recharging your energy level so that you can make it through the rest of the day.
I use the word flare intentionally. The pain I get is equivalent to someone sticking a red hot knife into my lower back and dragging it through my right buttock, down my leg and out the bottom of my foot to my toes. Its like someone lit up my nerves with a flare. This condition is aggravated by twisting or lifting incorrectly and is often even made worse by changes in the weather.
If you have a friend with a chronic pain issue, like back problems, Lupus or Fibromialgia, they probably have many days where the smile you see on their face is covering very stressful pain. They will tell you that this pain litterally saps your energy. It can cause anything from general distraction to lack of sleep and emotional collapse. If for some reason these folks suddenly say, “I can’t go with you tonight.” or they don’t seem to want to do anything, realize that they could be in severe pain even though it doesn’t show on the outside.
Progression and treatment
The problem with Degenerative Disk Disease is that it is a progressive ailment. It may start out with a little back pain. As I noted above, in normal situations the progression is that the pain goes away as we age. Unfortunately, there is also the negative progression as well. The pain increases as you age because the disks have failed in such a way that there are problems with alignment or what is called micro movement. Micro movement is when the vertebrae move in directions that the disk normally wouldn’t allow them to.
My personal pain started out with getting by getting out of bed one morning. I threw my legs over the edge of the bed and sat up quickly. There was a very loud pop and feeling of pressure in my lower back. This pop was loud enough that had you been in the upstairs of my house, you would have heard it. When I stood to my feet, I began to get severe spasms down my right leg. The spasms were so strong that they would literally straighten my leg.
I was given some massive muscle relaxers and pain meds to loosen the muscles so that the back could be treated. The end result was a round of three epidurals injected into the disks. The first did little to give me relief. The second and third relieved the pain. This procedure took a period of about 5 weeks during most of which, I had horrible fiery pain down my leg. At that time, I was diagnosed with Degenerative Disk Disease and told that eventually I would need surgery. The general belief was that the best thing to do was to continue with epidurals and other medications until I couldn’t stand the pain any longer. I was left with lower back pain and the feeling that my right foot was sleeping. This numbness in my foot would crawl up my leg as I did things that tested the limits of my back’s agreeability.
Years passed and my back would flare up from time to time. Each time my back flared, I would get spasms down my right leg. Only once did the spasms affect my left leg. Most of the time, muscle relaxers and pain meds would clear it up to a tolerable level. Three years ago I had a flare up bad enough to require a second round of epidurals. The MRI that was done before the epidurals indicated at least seven disks were failing or had failed. This time they were administered under flourascope so that the medication could be put directly into offending disks. I only needed two epidurals to achieve a suitable result on that occassion. This round of epidurals would last three years… Apparently this is a long time for my state of deterioration judging by my doctor’s response this week.
Changes in Pain
I took vacation the week of my birthday. My only plans were to do some spring cleaning on my house. Cleaning really makes my back grumpy. I planned a slow progression through the week to complete the cleaning. I began on Monday with the guest room. It is a small room so I needed to move the bed to clean the floor and walls behind the bed. I moved the mattress without any problem. By Monday night, I knew I shouldn’t have done that. The pain was intense. I hadn’t been sleeping well before that, now I couldn’t sleep at all. I tried from then to the Tuesday of the following week to just deal with the pain. Tuesday morning I broke down emotionally. I was so physically tired that I couldn’t function anymore. I went to work but came home in tears. I started back on my Xanax that I had been given when my mom passed away. I have been going to bed nightly with Xanax as it puts me to sleep.
This past Monday, I had X-Rays on my back which led to the scheduling of an MRI. The MRI showed all the disks from T11 were severely degenerated. Surgery was recommended by the physcian reading the MRI results. I am now waiting for my family doc to schedule an epidural. He wants to try that to give me some relief until the surgery is setup. I have an appointment Monday with the family doc to get his thoughts on how this will all play out. I’m not looking forward to having surgery but I don’t think there is much choice at this point. I have to get to a place where I can at least rest.
I have been dreading having another flare up because the pain has been increasing little by little since Januaryish. I went from taking Ibuprofen as needed last summer to having to take it every night to be able to sleep. In the last couple months, I’ve been taking 1200 mg just to make it through the day. This increase in the amount of medication needed to be able to get through the day was one factor I suspected that doc was going to say its surgery time. The other factor was the change in the pain itself. In the past, whenever I have aggravated my back, I immediately got spasms down my right leg. The pain is now very intense and I am not having spasms. I also can’t get comfortable in any position. This was my second indicator that something had changed for the worse. This being said… I wasn’t exactly surprised by the diagnoses.
Where do we go from here
I have spent a lot of time reading about back surgery and talking to folks who have had it. There are many many risks and many things that can affect the quality of the surgical outcome. It looks like I need to move forward with surgery. I will use what I’ve learned and take some recommendations I’ve been given to make the best choice I can as far as surgeons. I don’t think this is something I want to go to the corner quick back surgery doc. Too much rides on my back… Literally.
I will update as things move forward… Until then protect your back because I can tell you from experience you don’t want it to end up like mine.
~Cappy
Those analogies in the beginning were good. But note I’m hungry! haha
On a serious more, I’m Pretty close if you need anything. Ever.