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
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:
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!
