Spinal Injuries
Whenever friends and family see me, they invariably ask the standard question, "How are you?" More often than not, I respond with an "Okay..." and a bob of the head.
The real answer, however, is that I am never okay by a healthy person's standards. The truth is, "okay" to me simply means that I am well enough to be out and about with only a moderate amount of pain. It means I am well enough to be standing upright and talking. It means my health is currently stable enough that I am not needing to stay within ten feet of an available bathroom because I'm going to be sick at any moment. It means I prepared to be out and about by taking extra medications and foregoing all other activities so I would have the energy to be out and about at this moment in time. This is "okay" to me.
"Okay" for me means I can attempt to accomplish some household chores which will always result in me being "less than okay".
"Okay" for me means I can attempt to do some light carpentry or painting around the house for a few hours which will always result in me being "less than okay".
I can never play another sport ever again... no more basketball, no more hockey... no softball, no golf... no waterskiing, no snow skiing... no bowling, no rock climbing, no jogging... yet, to me, this is what "okay" means. I used to be very active in many sports including extreme sports but I have accepted this change in my life.
As I've written in previous blog entries, this has been an exceptionally lousy week for my spinal injuries so they are in the forefront of my mind today. I'm going to put aside my more serious, life threatening and incurable illness for a few moments while I write about living life with spinal injuries.
Simply stated... This is an extremely important concept to understand but it is definitely not difficult to understand. You must, however, understand this concept to understand what a chronically ill person is telling you. Here it is... If you are generally a "healthy" person, you need to understand that when someone struggling with chronic illness says they are "okay", this condition referred to as "okay" is absolutely nothing like when a healthy person says they are "okay". If we are referring to "healthy person" standards... I am never "okay".
After my first spinal injury almost 20 years ago, it was excruciating to sit... to stand... to walk... to lay... to do anything. No matter what I did, or didn't do, it hurt terribly. I couldn't sleep yet I continued to go to work every shift. I felt as though someone had slammed ice picks through each of my feet. I felt as though a nail had been driven into my spine. Through almost a year of physical therapy, I managed to bring this pain down to a tolerable level. At that point, I thought I was healthy again and 'good to go'. I was wrong.
The unfortunate truth is that once you injure your spine, your spine will always be injured to some degree. The truth is, your life will be changed forever and what once was "normal" or "okay" is replaced with a "new normal" and a different "okay".
Within a very short period of time after recovering from that first spinal injury, I injured my spine again. This time, however, the injuries were much more severe and would require a lot of dedicated, painful work just to learn to walk again as normally as possible. There were times during this second injury when I actually longed for the relative simplicity of my first spinal injury.
After many years of daily physical therapy, I eventually found myself in the hospital talking with a neurosurgeon about options. We were standing in a darkened examining room in front of a big backlit display showing MRI imaging of my entire spinal cord... the doctor in his labcoat, me in my typical open-back patient's gown, naked underneath.
We discussed each vertebra and each disk starting at one end of the spine and working toward the other, one by one. We discussed the spinal canal and spinal fluid and the impeded flow due to injuries and inflammation. We discussed calcium buildups caused by my body naturally protecting an injured area. In great depth, we discussed my two herniated disks, four bulging disks, six compressed disks, and a broken up disk and vertebra in my neck. We also discussed areas of my spinal canal being blocked by inflammation and damaged disks. I was with this surgeon for no less than two hours discussing my spine.
I asked the doctor what could we do... He looked me up and down, wryly smiled and said, "Whatever you are doing, keep doing it because you should not be standing here in front of me".
He continued to explain that he could try to fix one or two areas of my spinal column with surgery but there are three concerns... 1) there is always a chance that surgery would worsen things... 2) the surgery may not worsen but it may not help either... and 3) there are too many problems to fix so, even if one area was "fixed", I would continue to struggle with these injured areas.
He then again reiterated, "Whatever you are doing to allow you to be standing here in front of me is better than anything I can do for you... keep up with whatever you are doing... honestly, I am amazed that you are actually standing here."
This surgeon even personally called my primary care doctor to discuss my case with her because he was so impressed with the fact that I was standing there with him rather than sitting in a wheelchair.
I still continue with my daily physical therapy. On the rare "good days", the pain reaches only to the 4-6 range on the 10 point pain scale. Most days, the pain reaches the 6-7 range. On the bad days, such as the days this week, the pain easily reaches the 8-10 range.
So, the next time you see me and I answer your question about how I am doing and I respond "okay"... this means my pain is only in the 4-7 range. Would this be okay to a generally healthy person? For me, pain only reaching the 4-7 range is a "good" day.
If we are going by "healthy person" standards, I am never "okay". I don't talk in healthy person standards, however, simply because I have not been classified as a healthy person for almost 20 years.
If we should then talk about my primary illness, Systemic Mastocytosis, I can tell you that this illness is like my spinal injuries x 1000... yet, I'll still answer, "I'm okay" with a bob of my head.
It's all relative.
The real answer, however, is that I am never okay by a healthy person's standards. The truth is, "okay" to me simply means that I am well enough to be out and about with only a moderate amount of pain. It means I am well enough to be standing upright and talking. It means my health is currently stable enough that I am not needing to stay within ten feet of an available bathroom because I'm going to be sick at any moment. It means I prepared to be out and about by taking extra medications and foregoing all other activities so I would have the energy to be out and about at this moment in time. This is "okay" to me.
"Okay" for me means I can attempt to accomplish some household chores which will always result in me being "less than okay".
"Okay" for me means I can attempt to do some light carpentry or painting around the house for a few hours which will always result in me being "less than okay".
I can never play another sport ever again... no more basketball, no more hockey... no softball, no golf... no waterskiing, no snow skiing... no bowling, no rock climbing, no jogging... yet, to me, this is what "okay" means. I used to be very active in many sports including extreme sports but I have accepted this change in my life.
As I've written in previous blog entries, this has been an exceptionally lousy week for my spinal injuries so they are in the forefront of my mind today. I'm going to put aside my more serious, life threatening and incurable illness for a few moments while I write about living life with spinal injuries.
Simply stated... This is an extremely important concept to understand but it is definitely not difficult to understand. You must, however, understand this concept to understand what a chronically ill person is telling you. Here it is... If you are generally a "healthy" person, you need to understand that when someone struggling with chronic illness says they are "okay", this condition referred to as "okay" is absolutely nothing like when a healthy person says they are "okay". If we are referring to "healthy person" standards... I am never "okay".
After my first spinal injury almost 20 years ago, it was excruciating to sit... to stand... to walk... to lay... to do anything. No matter what I did, or didn't do, it hurt terribly. I couldn't sleep yet I continued to go to work every shift. I felt as though someone had slammed ice picks through each of my feet. I felt as though a nail had been driven into my spine. Through almost a year of physical therapy, I managed to bring this pain down to a tolerable level. At that point, I thought I was healthy again and 'good to go'. I was wrong.
The unfortunate truth is that once you injure your spine, your spine will always be injured to some degree. The truth is, your life will be changed forever and what once was "normal" or "okay" is replaced with a "new normal" and a different "okay".
Within a very short period of time after recovering from that first spinal injury, I injured my spine again. This time, however, the injuries were much more severe and would require a lot of dedicated, painful work just to learn to walk again as normally as possible. There were times during this second injury when I actually longed for the relative simplicity of my first spinal injury.
After many years of daily physical therapy, I eventually found myself in the hospital talking with a neurosurgeon about options. We were standing in a darkened examining room in front of a big backlit display showing MRI imaging of my entire spinal cord... the doctor in his labcoat, me in my typical open-back patient's gown, naked underneath.
We discussed each vertebra and each disk starting at one end of the spine and working toward the other, one by one. We discussed the spinal canal and spinal fluid and the impeded flow due to injuries and inflammation. We discussed calcium buildups caused by my body naturally protecting an injured area. In great depth, we discussed my two herniated disks, four bulging disks, six compressed disks, and a broken up disk and vertebra in my neck. We also discussed areas of my spinal canal being blocked by inflammation and damaged disks. I was with this surgeon for no less than two hours discussing my spine.
I asked the doctor what could we do... He looked me up and down, wryly smiled and said, "Whatever you are doing, keep doing it because you should not be standing here in front of me".
He continued to explain that he could try to fix one or two areas of my spinal column with surgery but there are three concerns... 1) there is always a chance that surgery would worsen things... 2) the surgery may not worsen but it may not help either... and 3) there are too many problems to fix so, even if one area was "fixed", I would continue to struggle with these injured areas.
He then again reiterated, "Whatever you are doing to allow you to be standing here in front of me is better than anything I can do for you... keep up with whatever you are doing... honestly, I am amazed that you are actually standing here."
This surgeon even personally called my primary care doctor to discuss my case with her because he was so impressed with the fact that I was standing there with him rather than sitting in a wheelchair.
I still continue with my daily physical therapy. On the rare "good days", the pain reaches only to the 4-6 range on the 10 point pain scale. Most days, the pain reaches the 6-7 range. On the bad days, such as the days this week, the pain easily reaches the 8-10 range.
So, the next time you see me and I answer your question about how I am doing and I respond "okay"... this means my pain is only in the 4-7 range. Would this be okay to a generally healthy person? For me, pain only reaching the 4-7 range is a "good" day.
If we are going by "healthy person" standards, I am never "okay". I don't talk in healthy person standards, however, simply because I have not been classified as a healthy person for almost 20 years.
If we should then talk about my primary illness, Systemic Mastocytosis, I can tell you that this illness is like my spinal injuries x 1000... yet, I'll still answer, "I'm okay" with a bob of my head.
It's all relative.
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