Week 3 T10-L3 Spinal Fusion Progress (with pictures!!!)

Here we go: Week 3.

I had my two-week post-op meeting on Tuesday and all is going very well.  My surgeon assistant was shocked at how quickly my incision is healing at this point.  In terms of the incision, I have pain there but it isn’t too bad really.  I also still have the “sunburn” type pain around my hips, but it seems to be getting a little better.  I also feel a bit of “old pain” popping up around T10, but it isn’t nearly as bad as it was before the surgery.  For three weeks after surgery, I can’t imagine things going better.  Knock on wood…

So my wife (she just turned 30 yesterday, and she had to spend it mostly taking care of me.  I am the luckiest man alive) and I have been keeping a list of important concepts to discuss each week to hopefully help you not only recover, but to also get you ready for your big day.  This week I want to talk about drugs (one of the topics that has become taboo in recent years). 

The drugs that I had to rely on to get me ready for surgery were becoming increasingly stronger and more frequent.  I started off with hydrocodone after a terrible injury over two years ago that put me out of work for a week.  I think that particular injury Really started the downward cycle that I was on; I would probably Also put money that each of you out there has a particular memory that you can blame for getting your back pain or neck pain nice and fired up (I have a crystal-clear memory from my first surgery.  I was with some of my friends, and I was dancing with my very good friend Stacy at the time.  I bent funny, and my life was changed permanently from that second forward.  I ended up getting my first MRI and then surgery not all that long afterward).

After the hydrocodone no longer worked, I switched to Percocet.  Next, I introduced extended relief oxycontin each morning and night in between my Percocet.  What really made me nervous was not the quantity of medicine that I was taking, but that the medicine did a little less each and every day!  I was really nervous as I wanted the pain to go away, and less and less of it actually disappeared each day.  In addition, I was having trouble sleeping, I was having trouble with depression and anxiety, and I was having trouble with muscle spasms (I am sure many of you can relate to the spasms). 

Here is the deal that the scare-tactic “professionals” probably don’t want you to hear: I never once became addicted and I never once got “high” from my pain medicine.  I had friends joke with me how nice it must be to be able to take such strong pain medicine, and I was always confused about this.  I didn’t want or need to get high on prescription meds; I wanted the pain to disappear.  I wanted my pain to minimize.  I never once felt that I couldn’t give up my pain meds (except having to deal with the pain of course).  Now, here is what upsets me about this.  As an intelligent (I like to think so) patient, it confuses me that there is so much talk about the “opioid crisis” or the “opioid epidemic” based on my own experiences.  I can’t understand why anyone would want to take such strong pills without needing them.  Again, they never gave me Any reason to take them except for some (and I do mean some) pain relief.  To me, abusing the prescriptions that people with chronic pain need to function is a true sign of being pathetic.  Doing Anything that makes getting pain relief more difficult should be a felony.  The hurdles I had to jump over and the loops I had to jump through to get my pain relief makes me sick to my stomach.  I had people look at me like I was nothing more than a drug user because of my age; I guess it’s hard for people to see a young person with legitimate health concerns if they haven’t walked through my shoes (that’s okay; I don’t care).

Now, I have been trying to stretch the time between my pills as much as I can.  At least my life isn’t run on a schedule of pain pills anymore.  I still need my pills (of course), but it’s not as bad now.  I am pretty confident that I am going to have to remain on an extended relief oxycontin (potentially a lower dose) based on my lingering T10 pain, but I would honestly be fine if I had to stay on the extended relief pills (again, they didn’t do anything except lower the level of pain). 

My walks are still progressing, and I have no reason to be less optimistic this week than in previous weeks. I still have my turtle brace for three to four weeks, but even that is a small price to pay to living (mostly) pain free.  Questions?  Comments?  Hit me up!

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