I Am Iron Man!!!
- Thread starter Rhino
- Start date
CharlesMorrison
Banned
WOW!! I feel your pain friend!
I wish you well and speedy recovery!
I wish you well and speedy recovery!
Rhino
New member
Yeah, it's called a compression or burst fracture. Basically it just means it got mushed. The first surgery they tried to stabilize it by injecting cement into it to harden it back up. You can actually see some of the cement from the first surgery on these x-rays. It's the white cloudy looking spots in front. Unfortunately the vertebrae was still compressing after that surgery whenever I stood up, and bent over, which was pretty painful. I called it very painful back then, but this latest surgery has introduced me to levels of pain I never knew existed. Had second degree burns all up one arm years ago. Doc told it was the worst pain known to man. He was wrong. He was very wrong.
I stopped breathing twice in recovery because of all the drugs they were giving me to try to control my pain. Somebody came in and said they could hear me screaming at the end of the next ward, which was two hallways away. Finally they decided they couldn't control my pain without risk of killing me so they sent me to intensive care and heavily sedated me into la la land for two days. For those not medically oriented, sedation isn't the same thing as pain control, though it's not at all uncommon for them to be used together. Sedation is actually a lot like a form of anesthesia. I remember very little of this, which was the entire point of sedating me. Apparently I still screamed a lot though. After I came off sedation, there were many times I would have been happy to be back on it. There still are every now and then. For example, I now hurt from sitting in the same position long enough to write the paragraphs for this post. That's why the original post was just one paragraph, and this paragraph was added after the fact as an edit. I change positions and start again to lessen the pain.
Sucks to be me right now.
I stopped breathing twice in recovery because of all the drugs they were giving me to try to control my pain. Somebody came in and said they could hear me screaming at the end of the next ward, which was two hallways away. Finally they decided they couldn't control my pain without risk of killing me so they sent me to intensive care and heavily sedated me into la la land for two days. For those not medically oriented, sedation isn't the same thing as pain control, though it's not at all uncommon for them to be used together. Sedation is actually a lot like a form of anesthesia. I remember very little of this, which was the entire point of sedating me. Apparently I still screamed a lot though. After I came off sedation, there were many times I would have been happy to be back on it. There still are every now and then. For example, I now hurt from sitting in the same position long enough to write the paragraphs for this post. That's why the original post was just one paragraph, and this paragraph was added after the fact as an edit. I change positions and start again to lessen the pain.
Sucks to be me right now.
BC1
,
Chin up. My wife went through L3-L4 and L4-L5 Fusions with rods and cages. Took the disks out through the front and put in the cages. Flipped her over and did the rods and screws. Hospital for Joint Disease in lower Manhattan. She did about 3 months in the back brace. They gave her a bone stimulator to facilitate healing. She did one year of P/T. The pain was pretty bad for the first few months and then slowly lessened. She stopped taking pain meds about a year ago. Be careful driving on those meds. You can be arrested for DUI.
Rhino
New member
Finally got to see pain management today, only a mere six months after my surgery. A wonderful testimonial to the stellar efficiency of the Bureau of Worker's Comp. Just can't wait until that kind of government efficiency is running all of our health care! Anyway, after the doctor expressed surprise that it took all this time for me to actually get a pain management appointment, he gave me my first pain medication in months. He didn't hold back either. He went straight to the high caliber ammunition, Oxycontin. It didn't make me pain free. It didn't even kill most of my pain. But just the modest relief I got was such a drastic change from my life during the last six months, it was like going to Disney World and winning the lottery all in one. I actually got to participate in such monumental tasks as...
.
1. Walking around the house. Yes, believe it or not, it can actually be an incredible joy to walk around your own house when you haven't been able to do it for months. Oh, I could do it before, but with a decided amount of pain, and only in limited trips because the pain increased with each successive trip. I even managed a couple of tiny dance steps to some music I was listening to. Sandy said, "Yep, you're drugged."
.
2. Leaning. Did he say leaning? Yes, I said leaning! I'm 'allowed' to lean up to 40 degrees (I think it's 40), but I can't get that far so it doesn't matter. But even minimal leaning starts to produce pain fairly rapidly. Do you realize how much you lean during daily activity? It's a LOT! Washing my hands hurts. Washing (rinsing) dishes hurts. Loading the dishwasher hurts. Lifting and raising the toilet seat hurts. Feeding the dogs and cat hurts. You get the idea. But today? I CAN LEAN!!!!!! Hallelujah!!
.
3. Throwing a tennis ball. Do you realize how many times the average Labrador Retriever needs a ball thrown each day? Do you know how depressed they get if they don't get their quota? They were HAPPY dogs today! We didn't just do tennis balls in the house. We did squeaky footballs in the back yard too. They were in seventh heaven.
.
I'm really going to pay for all this in soreness later, but I can't tell you how wonderful it was to have just a hint of normalcy back in my life for a few hours.
.
The eventual goal is for me to recover enough to go back to work, but he says I'm not ready to start physical therapy yet. He says my pain level is still too high for that. I go back in three weeks and we see where to go from there, but drugs aren't what I want for a long term option. We're just looking for a way for me to get into and through physical therapy so I can heal enough so I don't need the drugs anymore. There's some other stuff to try still too, but he needs to settle down my current pain first. The nerves in my back are just too 'hot' to work with right now, so we need to get that down to a more manageable level before we start working on the 'fine tuning'. At this point I'm just thanking God that I finally got an appointment with a pain management doctor. The details are just a secondary consideration compared to that at the moment. Once I've had time to adjust to feeling better, I'll start paying more attention to the details. For now I'll just enjoy what I've got for a while.
.
1. Walking around the house. Yes, believe it or not, it can actually be an incredible joy to walk around your own house when you haven't been able to do it for months. Oh, I could do it before, but with a decided amount of pain, and only in limited trips because the pain increased with each successive trip. I even managed a couple of tiny dance steps to some music I was listening to. Sandy said, "Yep, you're drugged."
.
2. Leaning. Did he say leaning? Yes, I said leaning! I'm 'allowed' to lean up to 40 degrees (I think it's 40), but I can't get that far so it doesn't matter. But even minimal leaning starts to produce pain fairly rapidly. Do you realize how much you lean during daily activity? It's a LOT! Washing my hands hurts. Washing (rinsing) dishes hurts. Loading the dishwasher hurts. Lifting and raising the toilet seat hurts. Feeding the dogs and cat hurts. You get the idea. But today? I CAN LEAN!!!!!! Hallelujah!!
.
3. Throwing a tennis ball. Do you realize how many times the average Labrador Retriever needs a ball thrown each day? Do you know how depressed they get if they don't get their quota? They were HAPPY dogs today! We didn't just do tennis balls in the house. We did squeaky footballs in the back yard too. They were in seventh heaven.
.
I'm really going to pay for all this in soreness later, but I can't tell you how wonderful it was to have just a hint of normalcy back in my life for a few hours.
.
The eventual goal is for me to recover enough to go back to work, but he says I'm not ready to start physical therapy yet. He says my pain level is still too high for that. I go back in three weeks and we see where to go from there, but drugs aren't what I want for a long term option. We're just looking for a way for me to get into and through physical therapy so I can heal enough so I don't need the drugs anymore. There's some other stuff to try still too, but he needs to settle down my current pain first. The nerves in my back are just too 'hot' to work with right now, so we need to get that down to a more manageable level before we start working on the 'fine tuning'. At this point I'm just thanking God that I finally got an appointment with a pain management doctor. The details are just a secondary consideration compared to that at the moment. Once I've had time to adjust to feeling better, I'll start paying more attention to the details. For now I'll just enjoy what I've got for a while.
Twistedcowboy
New member
I can somewhat relate. I had open heart surgery on June 11, 2014. Having your sternum sawed in half and your ribcage spread apart is no picnic. My surgeon told my beforehand that the spreading of the ribcage puts all kinds of pressure on the shoulders and back. He was right, still recovering there. For two months I couldn't lift more than ten pounds and I couldn't even sit up without assistance. That first sneeze had my doubled over for twenty minutes. They give you this little pillow to hug when you need to cough, it helped a little. You cough a lot at first because you get a lot of fluid buildup in the lungs while you're on the heart-lung machine. Not a fun experience and I hope no one on this site ever goes through it. I'm back to work and doing okay, but my upper back and shoulders still get very sore. Godspeed brother, hope you feel better soon.
Sent from my Xoom using USA Carry mobile app
Sent from my Xoom using USA Carry mobile app
Rhino
New member
Same to you, Twistedcowboy. Your recovery sounds a whole lot like mine, except for the fluid and heart-lung machine of course. I was extremely fortunate we'd bought an adjustable sleep number bed before the accident. Otherwise it would have been a lot longer before I'd have been able to sit up or get up unassisted. My younger son said one day that he measured my progress by how loud I screamed after coughing. Luckily for me sneezes aren't as bad because they don't involve the diaphragm like coughs do. They hurt a little, but nowhere near as bad as the coughs.
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I wasn't anywhere near as sore as I thought I might be yesterday, at least not in my back. Unfortunately playing with the dogs seriously aggravated the tendinitis in my right elbow. I didn't realize I was doing that because of the pain meds. I'll have to be more careful about that in the future.
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I wasn't anywhere near as sore as I thought I might be yesterday, at least not in my back. Unfortunately playing with the dogs seriously aggravated the tendinitis in my right elbow. I didn't realize I was doing that because of the pain meds. I'll have to be more careful about that in the future.
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