8. The resection

Janurary 11 we arrived at the hospital in Logan Utah to get the PCR covid test. We traveled all weekend to break up the 14 hour drive into tolerable sections. Moving my shop and the related stress of all that had taken a toll on my body. I was in pain daily now and started to avoid things like long car rides, sitting at dinner, and exercise. We had gotten PCR covid tests on our way out of town but a recent spike was delaying results. I felt confident we didn’t have covid. We were super careful. We barely saw people unless they acted like we did, social distanced, masked, and careful. The day following my Utah PCR test I got a call from the hospital that my results were positive. They offered no consult of what to do but advised if it was a false positive I could possibly reschedule. I immediately got on the phone with my insurance to get advice on where to go to retest. There was an urgent care across the street from the hospital and next to Dr. Vernon’s office. Jan and I both got PCR and rapid tests. The rapids came back negative but it would be a few days until we’d get the PCR results. We didn’t know what to do so we stayed in Logan. Jan was working remotely and it wasn’t possible for him to drive back during the work week. The day before my scheduled surgery I got the results of our LA test: negative. Then later the same day I got the results of our urgent care PCR: negative. Three tests after the hospital’s PCR test were negative and so was our LA test. I didn’t have covid. I called to try to reschedule surgery but was informed my slot was rescheduled for two weeks away and even with multiple negative tests proving I didn’t have covid the staff’s protocol was to consider me positive and wait a 2 week quarantine. Ok, I am so close… what is another two weeks?

Janurary 28, 2021 was my new surgery date and because they thought I had covid there were no covid protocols and I didn’t have to test this time (no wonder covid is a hot mess). I arrived at the hospital in the dark and was shocked that Dr. Vernon was there and ready to go right at my start time. That of course had nothing to do with him but was purely a bias I developed from my last surgery. Surgery start time was 7:30, and at 7:30 on the dot I was on the bed and being wheeled into the OR. All my labs, IV, and consents were completed. Here we go. When I woke up I remember it was dark and feeling like I didn’t want to breathe. Nurses and then Jan kept telling me I needed to breathe. I had been in surgery about 6 hours and intubated and that made my lungs lazy. As I slowly started to move, the more I was extremely nauseous. Then the nausea got worse and every time I moved my head or spoke I puked. The nurses were so amazing, they held the puke bags, helped me out of bed to pee, gave me multiple doses of nausea meds, and did everything they could to make me comfortable. That first step out of bed I wasn’t sure what to expect and I can only describe it as different than before. I felt slightly taller, that my center of gravity had shifted forward, and there was zero pain. The pain I was familiar with, and had that morning before surgery, was gone. There was nothing. I told the nurses and they said it’s coming and kept on top of my pain meds. But by that evening, when the nausea was gone I asked if I can be off the narcotics and they agreed. I was only on tordol and IV hydration and I felt great. I slept well and by late morning was discharged. I was moving slowly, kinda unsteady (which wasn’t unexpected), and my inner thigh muscles felt weak like they had never ever been used. All of the areas I thought would feel weak like my glutes and abs felt strong and were working. All the years of PT were paying off in a big way. I was on my way to a new life and that pain post surgery never arrived.

I can’t begin to say how grateful I am to Dr. Vernon. He both easily agreed to surgery but also treated me with the upmost respect as a patient. He never once doubted my experience or second guessed anything I told him. When I first met him at his office, prior to surgery, his wife and staff were giving another staff member a birthday lunch. I was invited to participate, to have pizza and cake, and play with his family’s two tiny dogs. I spent my consult appointment holding one of his dogs and I thought I was dreaming. Dr. Vernon and I are about the same age and I always felt like he saw me as a peer or a friend or even treated like family. This was so different, but in the most wonderful way, than treatment by any of my other doctors.

I had scheduled PT at almost my 3 week post op mark. I had started walking as soon as we returned from Utah and was building my strength up daily. By the end of the second week I was walking 4 miles on flat terrain. Still no pain. The suture area was raw from an adhesive allergy and the incisions were tender and the sutures abscessed a little but there was no deep muscle pain, no pain where 10 mm sections of vertebrae had been removed. This was amazing. This was the longest gap in pain since the night of the Oscars 2017, almost 4 years before. My new PT was mobile which meant she came to my house and I was excited to start. After our first visit I was in tremendous pain. I was flared up in all the old spots and some new ones. What the hell? Our next two visits had to be remote on zoom and I tried her proposed exercises and they felt awful. By our 4th visit I wanted to fire her. She didn’t know my body, she and I had a communication issue, and due to her hearing impairment she was not grasping the nuances of our time together. Then started the manipulation. She told me she “doesn’t let patients dictate their care” but that I “knew my body and we could modify our treatments”. I had suggested seeing her once every other week for only light soft tissue and she countered with something else and we landed back on our two visits a week. I’d see her and flare up. I’d spend the days I didn’t see her hiking, using the elliptical, gardening, and doing my own soft tissue work but when I saw her it flared me up all over again.

This continued on for three months. On April 26, 2021 during soft tissue on my abdomen and lower back she caused my disc to re-herniate. That evening I felt intense throbbing on my left side near my kidney. I could barely sleep the pain was so intense. I called my primary care and schedule urine tests, I initially thought she bruised organs or damaged my kidney. When the tests came back clear I scheduled a visit with an orthopedic who was great at getting MRIs approved. By the time of my MRI I had started experiencing discogenic pain again. I was having nerve symptoms down my legs and into my feet, intense pain along my abs and into my groin, and any and all activity made the pain worse. The MRI confirmed and exceeded my fears, my disc had fully collapsed and the remaining disc had herniated to an 8mm balloon. The herniation was extruding out to the left and was covering S1 root nerves. I saw the sections on the viewer the night after the MRI. I didn’t need to wait for my follow up with the orthopedic or wait for the radiologist’s report. My pathology was super clear and so was the solution: surgery. A total disc replacement or artificial disc. I had fedex’d Dr. Vernon a copy of the MRI so he had the data immediately. He could barely believe it was that bad. So from early May we started to make plans for my ADR (artificial disc replacement). The struggle that ensued is barely believable.

7. The pandemic