The Big Sneeze - Post #17

One year, post-surgery, I am stepping out of the shower with the right leg raised and the left leg carrying all my weight when I sneezed. The recoil threw my head backward then forward. At the time, I hadn't yet come to understand that a sneeze is something I must prepare for. Two feet firmly on the ground, back straight, shoulders square. Brace myself and wait for it. That is the way I execute now. But then? Who knew?

The sneeze exploded. The pitch forward immediately caused the most excruciating pain in my lower back and both legs gave out. I hit the floor. And not in a John Travolta kind a way. I am in agony and, once again, I have fallen and I can't get up.

Fortunately, this time, Angel is home. She come's a running to see what all the commotion is about. I am on my hands and knees on the bathroom floor. I can't move. I ease myself down to the floor so I am lying flat on my stomach and roll over to my back. Either position does little to ease the pain and it becomes immediately apparent that the best course of action is to remain immobile. Now normally naked on the bathroom floor with my Angel is something I think about often, but not today. With her encouragement I am back on my front and I crawl out the bathroom, across the hall to the bed room. drag myself on to the bed and lie still.

I am there for a few hours before it is decided that nothing is getting any better. With visions of deja vu, Angel once again loads up the meat into the car and off we go to Emergency. Well, needless to say, about eight hours of dancing with 12 on a pain scale that ends at 10, they run the X-rays and an MRI and determine that I have herniated discs L4 and L5 in my lower back. Likely aggravated from the impact of the fall years earlier. It just took a little longer and the wrenching of the back to set it all off. Jeeezuss.

So what to do about it? First, control the pain. Now that they know what's what, morphine, blessed morphine. And lots of it over the next two days on the ward. The doctors decide there is no need for surgery. My condition can be effectively managed through rest, icing and ultimately more physio to strengthen my core, abdominal muscles to "take the load" of the spine. Over time, this will all settle down and become manageable. Delightful. Tell me about it when I am coherent. More morphine please.

I am ultimately wheeled outta there with boat loads of Percocet and told to see my GP and my physio team to set up icing applications to reduce inflammation and a regimen of exercise routines to strengthen my lower body.

And that is what I did. Big changes once again but absolutely necessary to keep this wolf at bay. Lie flat on your back with an ice pack wrapped in a dish cloth applied directly to the discs for fifteen minutes at a time, six times a day, for a month. Then when I was able to move again, relatively unimpeded, I began the physio to set up the routines that continue to this day.