Woke up before the roosters to drop kids off at school and the babysitters and headed to the hospital for pre-op procedures. I was scared to death. It took forever and it was freezing there. I wasn't allowed to take any pain medication the day of surgery so I was in excruciating pain. I laid there for hours with my husband keeping my company. Bottom line: I spent 4 hours waiting before surgery and 3 hours after surgery recovering before I was discharged.
When I woke up from surgery I was experiencing indescribable pain. I immediately asked for an increase in meds. I had survived natural childbirth (not by choice) and this was worse, off the charts, a 17 on a scale of 10. Once I got ahead of the pain I was in much better shape. I was forced into a wheel chair to exit the hospital, which in hindsight was a good idea because I could barely walk back to my bedroom when I got home.
Days 2-5 the pain decreased slowly each day, but I was stiff, and unable to get out of bed without great pain. I could not sit anywhere. It was sit or stand only. The worst part of all was having a 5 month old infant I could not carry, pick up, or hold. There are no words for that kind of torture. I was not able to walk more than 5 houses away from my driveway for the first few days. It wasn't necessarily the pain that kept me from walking, but I was physically exhausted. I have never experienced anything like that before. I imagine this is the fatigue that elderly people speak of. The incision pain was still terrible, but my strength grew with each day. I walked almost every day. Here are the major increases in my distances:
February 10, 2012, I was able to walk 2 miles in 50 minutes. (Day 8)
February 18, 2012, I was able to walk 4 miles in one hour. (Day 18)
March 16, 2012, I was able to walk 8 miles in under two hours. (Day 44)
On April 1, 2012, I asked my orthopedic surgeon for a referral to see a physical therapist because I was having serious pain in the general area of the incision, but it was deeper, inside of my body. It wasn't the same throbbing, lightning pain that I'd had shooting through my sciatic nerve prior to surgery. However, it was painful enough that I began Googling the symptoms for re-herniation. I laid in bed at night paranoid that I was going to be one of the people the never recovered. I would search through boards ad threads online late into the night searching for others' descriptions of their post-op pain and how they knew they'd re-herniated.
I cried every single day. EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I am impatient, stubborn, and I want what I want when I want it. I am an independent woman, I don't let the Publix kid carry my groceries, I mow the lawn, climb ladders, remove tree stumps, ran dozens of miles in my 8th month of pregnancy, carried children on my hips as I kept house, and I pushed my body to the edge and more. None of which, I'm sure had anything to do with the fact that I just had spine surgery, right? *** insert sarcastic tone and eye roll*** Ugh. Now I couldn't even push a vacuum or put on my own underwear, for that matter. It was a very trying time in my life and I had to depend on everyone else to do everything.
By the end of April I'd been attending PT 3 times a week for a month and religiously doing my at-home exercises. My therapist said I should never run again. My orthopedic surgeon said I should never run again. He followed up that advice by saying, "I have two kinds of athletic patients. The ones who will give it up and find something else, or the ones who can't live without their sport. The only people that I've come across that can't live without their sport are runners and golfers. So, you can go run your little heart out and maybe I will see you back in a few weeks, a few months, a few years, or maybe never. But when I see you again, we will be discussing a spinal fusion. Hopefully, I never see you."
May 15, 2012, I ran for the first time 95 days after surgery. I ran 3.67 miles in 41 minutes. Very slow. Very, very slow, but I didn't even care. This is a picture my neighbor took as I returned to the neighborhood after that first run. I felt like Rocky. I could actually hear 'Chariots of Fire' playing in my head. It was the best feeling ever to get back out there again.
