Spinal Injuries

Over two decades ago, I suffered two separate line-of-duty spinal injuries during my career in the Air Force and Department of Defense.  These injuries have affected my life drastically and continue to affect my life every single day.  At this point, these debilitating injuries rate as secondary to my mast cell disease but they do affect my life every single day nevertheless.  

These two line-of-duty injuries have left me with two herniated disks, four bulging disks, six compressed disks (I've lost two inches of height at this point), two areas of spinal stenosing, a broken up disk/vertebra in my neck and osteophytosis. These injuries have also left me in a lot of pain each and every moment of every day. Pain management techniques and physical therapy are a mandatory part of my everyday life now.

I've seen two surgeons on two separate occasions about these injuries and both have indicated that I am not a viable candidate for surgery nor do I want to take that risk anyway.  With my luck, the surgery would cause more problems!  

I do not take narcotics/pain killers and I am an adamant advocate for non-surgical and non-narcotic treatment of chronic injuries such as what I live with each and every moment of every day.  At most, I will resort to taking an Aleve (which is an anti-inflammatory not a pain killer) once or twice a week and that is usually in combination with H1 blockers for my mast cell disease.  I will not resort to narcotics, not ever...  well...  if I were a "terminal" patient, I'd resort to narcotics on some level to ease some pain in my last weeks.  Mostly, I lean on pain management techniques and that works to a tolerable level in combination with daily physical therapy.

Every day involves pain management techniques, proper diet and physical therapy. All chronic illness must be managed closely as it ebbs and flows and these spinal injuries are no different.  There is a fine line in what my spinal injuries can handle and what they cannot handle and that is part of the ebb and flow of these injuries.  Some days are better than others.  Some days it is incredibly difficult to walk across a room.  Some days I need a cane.  Some days I don't leave the couch.  I must say that even after more than two decades, I still struggle to find this fine line...  and, admittedly, I inadvertently cross it far too often!

After my first line-of-duty injury, I continued working in my usual duties for almost a month before reporting the injury. I was constantly 'graying out' due to the pain as I continued my duties. My spine was not improving so I had to finally report it so I could get the time to recover.  And, honestly, I was at the end of my tolerance for an injury that was not improving on its own so I wanted to find some relief from the unbearable pain!  I felt like I had a railroad spike in my spine and ice picks stabbed through my feet, every day, all day.  

I went through a few months of rehabilitation while the Air Force pushed me into a light duty position.  The level of debilitation is difficult to describe when it comes to spinal injuries. People complain of having a 'bad back' so often that most people just think it is a lame excuse for laziness.  Perhaps it is for some but definitely not for me and yet I rarely utters those words of having a bad back and will usually help people with heavy things even when I know I shouldn't.  

Let me tell a story of where my level of debilitation was after just my first injury...

It was Christmastime and walking was possible but it was excruciating.  The pain would take my breath away.  Driving was excruciating especially changing gears using a clutch.  Lying down in bed was excruciating.  Doing anything was excruciating.  I was home attempting to put up our Christmas tree while my wife was at work.  As with everything else I attempted to do during this period, this turned out to be extremely painful.  

Something as simple as standing at this tree with my hands out in front of me was very painful.  My lower back was on fire and sharp shooting pain was running down both legs and into my feet.  My feet felt like someone had stabbed each foot with an ice pick.  It was really brutal but I was experiencing this everyday, all day, so this was "just another day".

The pain got so bad that I decided to lie on the floor at the base of the tree and try to hang decorations on the tree while I laid on the floor just to get some relief from standing with my hands out in front of me.  That was putting extra pressure on my spine.  Just resorting to lying on the floor in order to hang ornaments on a Christmas tree should be a fairly good indication of how much pain I was enduring.  I placed a flat box of decorative glass balls on the floor next to my head and started hanging decorations at the bottom of the tree as I laid on my back hoping for some relief to the intense spinal pain.

Unfortunately, this would prove to be a bad position to be in with my particular spinal injuries.  

Within a short time, my legs went numb and I could no longer move my legs at all.  Although my legs were numb, my lower spine was feeling as though someone had driven a railroad spike through my spine.  I couldn't move... I don't mean that the pain was so bad that I didn't want to move and make it worse... I mean I could not move.  The pain was indeed excruciating but no matter how hard I tried, I could not move my legs.

So, here I was lying under our partially decorated Christmas tree, lying on my back, unable to move.  The pain was unbearable but I was having fits of laughter because of the ridiculousness of the situation.  My head was under a Christmas tree and my legs were sticking out into the living room.  I felt like the wicked witch in The Wizard of Oz trapped under the house.  I just found this to be a rather funny predicament to be in even though it was extremely painful.  

A few hours passed before my wife arrived home from work. I was still stuck lying under the Christmas tree unable to move, it was now dark outside while the house was only illuminated by the Christmas lights on the tree.  When my wife walked in the door, all she saw was me lying under the Christmas tree, softly illuminated by the Christmas lights, and with my legs sticking out from underneath.  

My wife came into the darkened house, noticed me lying on the floor, and asked what I was doing.  For a few seconds, she thought I was just kidding as I laid there again laughing through the pain and ridiculousness of the whole situation.  Once she realized I wasn't kidding, she helped roll me onto my stomach, applied some ice packs to my spine for about 20 minutes to lessen some of the inflammation... then helped me out from under the tree over the course of another 10 minutes or so, one painful movement at a time...  then very slowly and carefully to a chair...  then slowly and carefully to the couch before I applied more ice and took some more anti-inflammatory medications.  Each step of the way required about 15-20 minutes and deep intentional breathing through intense pain before moving on to the next step.  I eventually made it to the couch though.  This was typical in those early days after the first line-of-duty injury.

Trying to do any little household chore was difficult.  Walking was difficult.  Sleeping was difficult.  Everything was difficult.

Five months later, after months of physical therapy, rest and recuperation, I felt I was ready to go back to full worldwide duty.   I jumped through all the hoops required of the Air Force but I immediately re-injured my spine in the line-of-duty yet again.  This time, however, the injuries I sustained to my spine were far worse than the original injury and required far more extensive and intensive rehabilitation and physical therapy.

I went through six weeks of physical therapy, eight hours a day, five days a week just to learn to walk again, then to do some basic household chores, then to do some stuff related to my career...  lifting things, climbing things, walking, etc.  By the fifth week I was going to a local gym after each full day of physical therapy so I could exercise even more.  I knew I needed to build up my strength.  I would spend another two hours in the gym everyday even after the eight hours of physical therapy.  

When I graduated from this intense physical therapy...  and this felt like more of an accomplishment than graduation from high school or even college...  I felt I was ready to get back to full duty and qualified for worldwide duty.  While still on light duty, I applied for a temporary duty in a combat position in a combat zone just to prove to myself and to the Air Force that I was now fully recovered.  

A few weeks later, I hadn't heard anything so I called a friend in DC to inquire about this temporary assignment.  After exchanging some usual pleasantries, I let him know I was calling to ask about my temporary duty assignment.  His voice softened but to a more serious tone and asked, "Are you sitting down?"  

I knew this wouldn't be good news.

He explained that a disability retirement is mandatory after a second line-of-duty injury to the same body part.  He and I had been pretty close and still talked often so he knew how I loved my career and knew I would want to fight this so he then explained how to appeal this ruling.  

About two years into this frustrating appeal process with my life and career on hold, I was discharged as disabled from the Air Force on Christmas morning. (The appeal process was long and a complicated, frustrating fight that is too long to detail here but a couple of F-16 pilots whom I respected deeply and whom I considered friends advised me to take the retirement before I ended up in a wheelchair.  This was wise advice so I revoked my appeal after two years of pointless fighting with the medical evaluation board.)  On Christmas Eve, my "light duty" supervisor called me into his office and joked that I got a Christmas present from the Secretary of Defense as he handed me an official letter, signed, and stating that I am to be separated as disabled on December 25th.  Although I wanted an end to the long fight to save my career, this was not a Christmas present that I wanted.  Admittedly, since I had more recently officially accepted this outcome by revoking my appeal, it was a bit of a relief in some ways.  

By the end of January, I was then fully retired as disabled from the Department of Defense too.  During these last months, I received many calls from around the globe from people I had worked with over the decades.  I also received some kind words from a few people on my base but, for the most part, I was treated as an outcast by far too many people on my base, all day, every day.  I don't know why.  It still bothers me to this day and I don't know why it bothers me because it shouldn't.  Some people are simply thoughtless idiots who believe rumors that make little to no sense.  Unfortunately, this has left a very bad taste in my mouth that I can still taste vividly today.

In January, when I out-processed at Army Headquarters, the specialist who was out-processing me knew of my career and we had chewed some similar ground in our pasts.  He closed the door to his office, turned to me, and said point-blank, "this base is screwing you...  you don't deserve this...  I'm sorry."  

I could write a book just on my spinal injuries and how these injuries have changed my daily life but, in short, it is now closing in on three decades later and I am still doing daily physical therapy and struggling every single day with enough spinal pain to buckle my knees and make breathing painful.  

After my retirement, my primary care doctor ordered a full spinal MRI which in itself was an incredibly painful experience because I had to lie perfectly still in the MRI tube for about two hours.  Doing anything for more than 10 minutes or so is extremely painful even lying perfectly still.  

A surgeon reviewed these MRI results with me going from one vertebra...  to the disk...  to the next vertebra...  up the entire spinal cord, and said, "Whatever you are doing, you need to keep doing it because you should not be standing here.  You should be in a wheelchair.  We could fix one area of your spine but it won't change the big picture because you have multiple significant injuries.  The best course of action is to keep doing whatever you're doing."

Good or bad...  or perhaps good and bad, this is a way of life, for life.  I continue to do whatever I can, whenever I can which, really, is the way I've always lived my life.  What I am capable of doing, however, has changed and continues to evolve and devolve.