24/08/2024
< RE-SURFACING >
Pt.1 About this time last year I was laid up in hospital after getting stuck on my floor at home with excruciating back and leg pain. It took two paramedics and a couple of shots of morphine to get me off the ground and into the ambulance and then a whole day of testing out drugs which was not as much fun as it sounds. Most of them did nothing until, after about 16 hrs, we found the magic pill and the pain temporarily subsided. It was a weird day, especially as I had already eaten a w**d gummy to try and ease the pain before the paramedics arrived and gave me morphine. The hour or so after that was probably the most pleasurable part of the whole experience!
I had already had a scan so knew it was a herniated disk in my lower back (for the anatomy geeks, specifically a protruding disk between L5/S1 with advanced endplate degeneration, check out the second photo) that was causing the pain. Now that bulging disk was pushing on the root of my sciatic nerve creating blasts of electrical pain, numbness and pins and needles all the way down my leg and into my foot. I couldn't sit down, so resorted to standing pretty much all day, resting by lying over the footstall or edge of the sofa. Sleep was almost impossible and only happened for a few hours when the really strong painkillers kicked in.
And that was me for a few months. Mostly standing, in pain, pretty high on as much co-codamol and dihydrocodeine as I could take and somehow still managing to do my office job from home 2/3 days a week. Looking back I am not sure how I did that as there were times I could barely string a sentence together...not my finest period of work I'm sure.
All of this meant that literally overnight I went from being a fit, strong, mobile yoga teacher and massage therapist to not being able to really move that much at all. A walk around the garden was about all I could manage. I had to cancel all of my classes and clients with no idea how long it would be until I could go back to them.
Continued in the comments…