Posted: 3/28/2025 5:26:52 PM EDT
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Grab a beer, this got long... At some point around 7/10/10, while working alone, in the middle of the night (I'm a vampire, so it worked), I fell, landing on a handrail across the small of my back. Nothing hurt, so I stood up, checked for cameras, and got on with it. It was my Friday, so I went home, drank like a fish (meaning, it was July, and I was in the pool with a half case of Shiner in the cooler), and generally chilled out. On my Monday, I woke up, threatened to shoot the alarm clock, and started to get up. That's when I felt something like a rusty spring snapping in my lower spine, and my left foot went numb. I had a new boot working with me that week, so I got up, got dressed, and picked IIIA kevlar and a G20 for the day (gotta accessorize). I couldn't push in the clutch on the Jeep, so I got in the Durango, and headed to work. I miss the days of having multiple options in duty guns and vehicles. Anyway, after a week of letting the noob drive me around everywhere, I was not in good shape. I had an unofficial range day with my Captain and a few coworkers, and I wasn't gonna miss that, so I sat down with the Capt, and said I needed a few days off to get my back sorted out. I saw my doctor the next day, who gave me a bucket full of samples of stuff I'd learned about in the academy (mostly oxycontin and percoset), and told me to come back in a week if it wasn't fixed. A week later, it wasn't fixed, so they did a bunch of tests, one of which made me jump out of the chair, and proved that I had lost over 97% of the use of my left leg. I could (and can) only walk by locking my left knee straight. A month after my last day of work, I looked up an ortho surgeon on my (particularly good) insurance, made an appointment, and told my doctor that he was going to call in a referral to the surgeon right now, or I was going to show up at his office and sit there, in uniform, until he did. He didn't want that, because reasons I'll get into later, so he did what I demanded, and I hobbled into the surgeon's office. I already had MRIs and nerve conduction studies and x-rays and things and stuff, so I handed them all to the surgeon, and he disappeared for about 5 minutes. When he walked back in, with what I now know is his concerned face, and said, "I never tell anyone they need surgery the first time I meet them... you need surgery right now." So he looked at his schedule for a date, and the first thing he had was the week before a shoot I was running, and he blunk at me when I said we had to put it off for a few more days. He still gives me shit over that. So surgery happened (partial laminectomy, partial discectomy), and it helped a lot, but not enough to let me walk unassisted again, and many, many more things happened that I can't remember the exact timing of, because either too much stuff, or too many pain meds, but here's what I remember, from 2010-2020: 3 surgeries (one night in the hospital for one of them, the rest were outpatient): 1 spinal cord stimulator trial 1 spinal cord stimulator implant, followed by 1 revision 2 steroid injections (didn't work) 2 rounds of some test where they inject fluid into your spine to see what happens. Fortunately, milk of amnesia exists. 1 EMG, which involves stabbing you with several dozen long needles, into nerves, followed by electroshock torture. This proved I wasn't faking it. Several MRIs, with and without contrast The total at this point was 9 procedures that involved some form of anesthesia. I'd gone on a diet in early 2014, after getting a spinal cord stimulator installed, losing 110 pounds in 9 months, and could ride my mountain bike 20 miles a day, easily. The stimulator died towards the end of the year, and I was dealing with a nasty divorce, so I never had time to get it worked on. Mostly because I was back to 90% normal (or at least a new normal). Fast forward to 2019, because that was a pretty boring 5 years. My back hadn't bugged me in a while, though, and I was the technical director at an escape room, with employees to do the heavy lifting, and things were going great, other than that little cancer incident in 2019 (I whooped its bitch ass, and was declared cured in 2020). After the plague hit, the company folded. Crap, I loved that job, but at least I had some time to dig a ditch for a leech line. I had just finished roughing out the trench with a sharpshooter, and then my back blew up. I figured it would be a couple of weeks of hating life, then slowing getting back to work around the place, because that's how it happened before. Nope. 18 months and two surgeons later, I had one set of notes saying there wasn't anything he could do, and another saying there was nothing worth fixing. I was in the worst condition I'd ever seen at this point. Like, shopping for wheelchairs broken. I got lucky and found a good pain management doctor that replaced my dead implant with some fancy new one with Bluetooth (surgery #12), and things were looking up. Also, because I'm weird, I wanted that $150,000 piece of titanium back, and now it's sitting on a box somewhere. Unfortunately, the new implant just didn't work, so I was surviving solely by the marvels of modern pharmaceuticals. Then it went completely to shit. Something exploded again, this time taking out both legs. Not enough to keep me from being able to move, just massive amounts of pain, and I needed a walker to get from my chair to the bathroom and back. Fortunately, I did some insurance witchcraft that resulted in my original surgeon being on my plan. So I saw him again at some point in 24, he pulled out the new implant in October '24 (#13), which is also in a box somewhere, so I could get an MRI without exploding or turning inside out or whatever happens (induction is a bitch?), and that showed the problem. Even I could see it, and I have no idea what I'm looking at. L3-4 had exploded, taking out both branches at that level, which is why I had electric fire running down my legs every time I thought about moving them. In December '24 (#14), he went in from the side, shoving muscles out of the way to get to the disc, which he removed and replaced with the most expensive single piece of metal I've ever touched, a 3d printed titanium block with a weird infill pattern in contact with the vertebrae, then rolled me face down and went in through the back to screw in some titanium bits to brace stuff. Then three days in the hospital, including waking up one night to find a nurse drawing blood from my trigger finger. WTF?!? Who the hell does that?!? Shockingly, I managed to not get yelled at for drifting a wheelchair around the hospital at night. So here I sit, still in pain, since the last round of surgeries was to keep it from getting worse, not stopping it, that's impossible. I can't drive because of more spine problems, bone spurs in my neck are growing into the nerves going to my left arm, so looking left makes that arm shut down entirely. I need to be on nucynta, which lets me function, but it's not covered by my insurance, so it would be $1k+/mo. The worst part isn't that disability insurance managed to find a loophole that let them out of paying for an OTJ injury, and getting SSDI takes a lawyer that I can't afford, it's that I would have been back to work in a month if my PCP had sent me to the surgeon immediately. Karma caught up to the PCP, at least. His house was raided, and he had a duffle bag of other people's prescriptions and a hidden grow room attached to his master bedroom, which he claimed not to know about. He got bailed out, then went directly to the airport to go back to India, eliminating any chance of a malpractice suit (lawyers all said they couldn't do anything since he'd fled the country... but shouldn't we have been suing the malpractice insurance company?). So take care of your spine. I was so focused on not getting shot that I didn't realize the tools I needed for that goal would directly lead to a career ending injury. I switched from a stainless Para P14 to an FNP40, and then a G20SF, traded out my black S&W cuffs for Asp aluminum, left my big flashlight in my go bag, since I had a light on my gun and a smaller light (Streamlight Stinger, I think) on my belt, and stopped carrying two radios, but it was too little, too late. I'll end this with the exact same line I gave the surgeon in October 2010: "Well, shit." |
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I somewhat understand your predicament. I have osteoarthritis leading to stenosis in my neck and spine which often leads to numbness, tingling and pain in my arms and legs. I’ve tried the shots, they worked somewhat but were losing their effectiveness. Now, I regularly take 5 rx meds to get through my days and an optional 6th if needed. Thankfully, no ‘narcotics’ but can still only get 30 days worth at a time and am dependent on them to function. However, I’m not “bad enough” yet to qualify for surgery. But, I would do it tomorrow morning if they would do it. So, I’m in an interesting position. Not “qualified” for surgery, but dealing day-to-day is challenging. |
| I've been in that no man's land a few times. It's almost as bad as the insurance company deciding the MRI I'd had surgery specifically to get wasn't covered. The surgery to unwire me was, but not the much cheaper MRI? The medical BUSINESS in this country is broken. |
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Been there, done that and luckily I was a one in a million case and came out ok despite the severe level of damage. I can sure you this, nobody understands it until you have real back pain. Most Admins don’t give a shit to prevent it. |
“ Well, it feels like someone took a rubber band and snapped it right on the edge of your anus.” -JThompson
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Originally Posted By GlockPride: I somewhat understand your predicament. I have osteoarthritis leading to stenosis in my neck and spine which often leads to numbness, tingling and pain in my arms and legs. I've tried the shots, they worked somewhat but were losing their effectiveness. Now, I regularly take 5 rx meds to get through my days and an optional 6th if needed. Thankfully, no 'narcotics' but can still only get 30 days worth at a time and am dependent on them to function. However, I'm not "bad enough" yet to qualify for surgery. But, I would do it tomorrow morning if they would do it. So, I'm in an interesting position. Not "qualified" for surgery, but dealing day-to-day is challenging. Second opinion? |
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Originally Posted By feudist: Really? My surgeon (ACDF for stenosis)thought tingling/numbness was a far more serious symptom than pain, indicating damage rather than just impingement. Second opinion? I went completely off topic while trying to type the following. Yes, get a second opinion. The time to get really concerned is when the pain suddenly goes away. That's where I was about a week after taking time off from work. Left leg was completely numb, and I tripped over myself several times since I couldn't feel my cane being in the middle of my foot. All my limbs have some level of tingling and/or numbness. Before surgery, my legs would feel like liquid fire, and that's completely gone. Occasionally I get some stuff about like sciatic nerve impingement, mostly in my left leg, that goes away if I shift off that leg. The surgeon doesn't expect my back pain to ever end. I've been testing what happens with different pain med doses (gabapentin and Percoset). Today I didn't take either, at all, because we're done building the chicken coop, so I could lay off the whole farmer thing today to try to recover. No withdrawal, thanks to starting to cut down from post-op levels ~2 weeks ago. Yes, I'm in a ton of pain, but it's not like the meds were stopping that. Also, did I somehow forget how to sub to threads so I can actually see replies, or has something changed during my 10 year vacation? |
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Sucks man. Reading your story. And knowing countless other career LE that needed replacement knees, hips, and suffered from all sorts of issues including back issues. It blows my mind cops take their body for granted. I learned relatively quickly to minimize gear/weight on my body. I work days now. Have a WML but do not carry an extra hand-held. If I need one I'll go back to my car and get it. I also don't carry a bunch of bullshit. Aluminum cuffs. Only 2 spare magazines. No baton. Ultra-light knife, no spare gun, Etc. I've always been relatively active and athletic but I've worked hard at remaining so. Especially when I entered my 30s. If you aren't lean & muscular. Doing routine stretching/mobility work. Working on sprints/foot-work. Training boxing & BJJ. Along with minimizing the gear you carry. You're basically just gambling nothing goes wrong with your body. While we aren't professional athletes/fighters. We should be nearly as capable as them if we want to thrive in this career. It really sucks working 12 hours and needing to fit in a workout along with that. But its just the necessity of the life. I work 5:30A-5:30P. I stop by the gym after my shift. As of now I spend about 20-25 minutes doing mobility/stretching and 45ish minutes lifting weights. Typically get home around 7:00-7:30PM. If its an off day on top of whatever other workout for the day I might work in some BJJ, Boxing, swimming, sprints, etc. Even if I don't feel like working out I remind myself its a privilege to have the physical ability to workout and to maintain my body & health. I try to tell rookies but it often falls on deaf ears. |