Most would believe that a
twenty-eight year old would be too young to witness the decay and collapse of
his once healthy body. Yet, that is the
process I am experiencing right now.
Each day I sense more movement in my spine and by night the pain in my
back and neck overwhelms my desire and need to sleep to the point where I often
find myself writing political or social commentary to pass the time and sooth
my soul. What I have not done yet, but
hope to do now, is map this process and relate how it has felt along the
way. Few who know me are aware of this
alternative reality I face almost every time it gets dark. Fewer still realize how scary the nighttime
is for me and how much I wish I did not have to face another one. I welcome you to my reality and hope that
what I tell you can answer questions some of you may have on why I feel
compelled to write and what in my psychology is feeding often discordant
actions or emotions that may make me socially uncomfortable.
During my youth I developed what
is called Pars Defect in my lower spine.
This is a defect where the bones in the spine do not connect to the
other bones to which they are supposed to be attached. Because of this misconnection my spine tends
to have more flexibility than most other people’s. This served me well in limbo competitions,
but does not make for a solid bone structure as I begin to age. What I did not realize is that this problem
could stay hidden inside my back for my entire childhood, grudgingly exposing
itself on rare occasions when I happened to overtax my vertebrae. Throughout high school I pole vaulted,
wrestled, weight lifted, and played soccer.
In college I added to these sports with ultimate frisbee, tai kwon do,
and crew. Overall, I was very athletic,
in great shape, and slowly building up scar tissue in my lower spine where bone
was supposed to have formed. Every time
I hit the ground, jolted my spine, or was thrown by someone I did a little more
damage to an already weakened structure.
Eventually, this scar tissue began pressing on my sciatic nerve, causing
me intermittent pain in my right hip that I associated with not stretching
enough or periods of inactivity and muscle fatigue. When this pain occurred I would merely stretch
more and eventually it would go away. In
my junior year of college I had the worst spell of this pain where for about a
month I lost most use of my right leg. I
went to the student health services at my school and was advised that I merely
needed to stretch more. As this
confirmed what I already knew I just stretched more, the pain eventually went
away, and I went on with my activities.
I stayed very active in sports
throughout college and graduate school, but let myself slip away from such
demanding physical performance when I took a desk job upon earning my graduate
degree. I started to put on some weight and began noticing more soreness in my
back and right hip, which I still attributed to inefficient stretching. Long airplane rides endured with poor
posture, non-ergonomically designed government office furniture, and a lack of
knowledge about the hidden problem in my back led me to begin feeling pain at
the base of my spine a few years ago. I
first noticed it on a very long flight to Norway when I could no longer sit
in the airplane seat and had to stand several times during the flight. I had never felt pain at the base of my spine
before, but yet again I attributed it to not properly stretching and a lack of
physical activity. What followed this
new pain was a period of harsh physical conditions that demanded a lot of work
out of my back and legs as I traversed east Asia with a burden laden backpack
and a curiosity for all the stair endowed sites of interest in the Middle
Kingdom, the Kingdom
of Champa, and Viet Nam. Bearing that weight on my back as I ascended
the steps to heaven or caught the sunset from the top of hills overlooking
Angkor Wat sped up the process of deconstruction taking place within my lower
spine. As I wrote to most of you
describing my journeys through Asia I was,
unbeknownst to all of us, beginning my process of collapse.
Upon my return to the United States I
returned to biking and was a proud new owner of a quality mountain bike on
which I began training. I only took it
on relatively easy rides at first, figuring I would work my way up to learning
how to properly mountain bike before I tackled the Moab. Well, on one of these easy rides my front
brakes caught before my back brakes as I was standing too high in the seat. Such an improperly timed halt forced my
entire body to fly off of the formerly quickly moving contraption and land me
straight on my right knee into some very solid earth. This was the most painful fall I have ever
taken. I was stunned and had to just sit
and catch my breath for some time afterwards.
My knee was in severe pain, my helmet had a large gash in the side, and
my ego, well, that still hasn’t recovered.
This accident and its associated pain stopped me from playing ultimate
for several months because I could barely walk on the leg, let alone try to run
on it. In the first few days after the
accident I went to the doctor (Kaiser) who merely offered me some crutches, a
leg brace, an x-ray, and a wish of luck.
I demanded to see an orthopedist, but was disappointed when she merely
told me to stay off the leg for six months to let it heal. Not being satisfied with the care I was
receiving I asked to have physical therapy, but was told that I did not need it.
Insistent that I receive
physical therapy I took my problem to a doctor outside of my medical plan and a
physical therapist who I paid for out of my own pocket. They both provided me with some insight into
my leg problem and some assistance in convincing Kaiser that physical therapy
would be good for me. When I finally was
able to get Kaiser to agree to treat me (fully 8 months after injuring my leg)
I was already feeling some back pain from having walked funny for such a long
time. At my first opportunity I ditched
Kaiser for a real health plan and was lucky enough to find a doctor who was
willing to work with me to find out the source of my enduring knee pain and my
increasing back problems. I tested with
Rhumatologists, orthopedists, neurologists, and physical therapists, but my
knee pains still would not go away and my back has continued to deteriorate.
Sometime over the past year,
although I am not sure of the date, the pain in my back migrated from just
within the base of my spine up to where my hips meet my back. Through an MRI my neurologist has discovered
that the disk between my L5S1 herniated, thus forcing the two vertebrae to rub
against each other and pinch my sciatic nerve.
This explains my constant pain in the back of the right leg and why my
right leg is so incredibly weak as compared to my left. What this also means is that my left leg and
the other disks in my back are compensating for this structural collapse and
each in their own time will give out.
That brings me to where I am
today. Every day now I feel more vertebrae
moving in my back. This means that my
disks are becoming weaker. As my right
leg weakens and I continue to walk with a limp my back will continue to try to
compensate, thus reducing its already minimized ability to hold me
upright. Core strengthening exercises
and leg strengthening will slow this process, but once begun I cannot turn back
the clock. Eventually, I will lose
feeling and the use of my legs, at which time my doctors will fuse my spine so
that I may regain some mobility. My
future looks to be one of ever increasing disability permeated by surgeries and
a hope for my current state of pain becoming so normal that I begin to believe
that it has always been like this.
Each night I go to bed knowing
that I won’t sleep through the night. Prescribed
drugs have helped ease some of the nighttime pain, but offer diminishing
returns over time despite ever increasing doses. It is ironic that when I’m conscious I can
think about other things so that I don’t tend to notice the pain, but when I
try to sleep and heal the pain becomes so overwhelming that I am forced to
return to consciousness again in order to take my mind somewhere else. I feel as if I have to avoid thinking about
just one thing in order to accommodate the pain.
Hopefully, some of you may have
learned why I’ve been short tempered, emotionally variable, and psychologically
disconnected in the recent past. I offer
you this information not to excuse myself or my actions, or to claim that they compare
with real life and death problems many others face because of systemic rather
than mere structural issues, but instead as a opening into my life and an
understanding of my nights so that when you see me during the day you can
recognize why I may be out of it. I care
about each of you enough to share what most would consider very personal
information because I want you to share my life with me and understand me as
best anyone who is not me can.
