This was Christmas time in 2003, eight months into my new job, when I already needed a leave of absence because my pain was so great. I remember the trip back home — and the way back — quite intensely: I went home to be there for my mom, when her mother (my grandmother) passed away. My grandmother wasn't the warmest, but I knew my mom needed me so I went. I tried to medicate in an attempt to knock myself out and sleep through the flights, but the level of pain in my lumbar spine eliminated that option.
By New Year’s Day, I was back home. The pain was so great I could barely move. I was worried if I wasn't thinking and didn't take precautions, something bad might happen.
Later that night, I felt a sneeze coming and did everything I could to resist the urge, knowing how much it was going to hurt. I tried everything but I couldn’t help it. The sneeze came; my L4-5 and L5-S1 discs exploded; excruciating pain threw me to the floor.
JT was with me when it happened. I couldn't move. It took about an hour to get me downstairs (a long flight) and into the car.
It was late at night — January 1, 2004 — in the CPMC Davies Campus ER. I spent the night on a morphine drip, vomiting periodically, stuck in an exam room. The assumption was that my nausea was the result of the pain. But I noticed a significant loss of strength, motor function, and sensation in my left leg; it felt like someone flipped the power switch from on to off. I remember questioning the ER attending physician: Why was I puking? Why wasn't my leg working? What would happen next? He ignored me. In the morning, he diagnosed a sprain and sent me home.
A few days later, I knew something was wrong with me, so I called my primary care doctor's office to ask for an order for an MRI but my doctor was on vacation. No one in the office could write the order for me. Instead they referred me to an orthopedic spinal surgeon and suggested I get the order from him. He was booked for weeks and wouldn’t squeeze me in. I asked if any of the other orthos in the practice (specialists in neck, spine, elbow, foot, whatever) had openings and took the first available slot, with Dr. Alex Jameson*, the knee specialist. Five minutes into our appointment, he did a 5-minute evaluation and said, "You've clearly blown a disc," then gave me an order for an MRI.
As soon as the films were delivered to Dr. Jameson, he called and said to come back to the office immediately to see the spinal surgeon who magically found time to see me.
The MRI showed a "huge" extrusion at L4-5, and a smaller one at L5-S1. The bigger one — L4-5 — looked like a black snake, crawling up my spinal canal, toward my brain. Later, the spinal surgeon will tell me it’s one of the largest he’s seen in over 30 years of practice. Another referred to it as "the mother of all extrusions."
After my discs ruptured, I was in significantly less pain but my leg didn’t work. There was no doubt I needed a surgery, and it had to happen fast. We scheduled my surgery and bought my mom a plane ticket.
*Doctor names changed for privacy.