Life Through a TV Screen – PT. 6
Disclaimer: This next chapter will be part personal experience, part physical therapy education based on existing research literature and medical guidance from Derek’s providers. It is not necessarily universally applicable medical advice, and you should contact your doctor for specific medical advice matching your individual needs.
July 2022
More than halfway through the year. The arrival of this month marks the beginning of being on leave from work. I still try to find ways to keep moving forward in one dimension of life or another, acknowledging that there are limitations with my current level of function. I feel like I am for the most part still just going through the motions of existing, but in the back of my mind, I can’t help but wonder what the other side of surgery will look like. Feelings of wariness surrounding the impending operation mix with an unwavering faith in the necessity of the process. It is an interesting mix to say the least, but not one that I am losing sleep over thankfully.
I received a call to schedule my surgery, and was able to get a day and time locked down for my surgery. Once my surgery was scheduled, there was a lot of waiting to do. Most of my time spent before the surgery can fit into one of the following categories: filling out disability paperwork, playing video games, watching/re-watching TV shows, pre-operative exercise, and following track and field news. I had tickets originally for the World Track and Field Championships this month in Eugene, but made the decision to cancel the trip. Although I am very bummed to be missing out on watching the world championships in person, getting healthy is the biggest priority. I content myself with watching the championships on TV and livestreaming from the internet.
On the morning of my surgery, I did my last preparations for the surgery and my dad drove me to the hospital. I checked in, and waited outside with my dad briefly before being called in to the pre-surgical admitting room. I had vitals taken, was weighed, and then swapped into a gown to lie down on a hospital bed to await my turn. A couple nurses came to my bedside and began asking me pre-operative health questions while prepping me with an IV with saline solution. Since I’ve been pretty healthy other than my disc herniation, I was able to breeze through the health questionnaires. The anesthesiologist came to talk to me to see if I had any questions, and I was relieved to find out that I would be put under anesthesia rather than being awake for the procedure. The thought of being awake while the surgery was ongoing was a little daunting, and I figured it would be easier to just wake up after everything was done.
The surgeon ended up being ahead of schedule, so one of the nurses who was going to be present for my surgery wheeled me over to the operating room. Once at the operating room, I was still in the hospital bed lying on my back. I knew at some point they had to get me onto my stomach to do the surgery, but I didn’t know if that was going to be before or after anesthesia. The anesthesiologist started the flow of the anesthetic medication and I could feel the difference in the liquid compared to the regular saline solution as it entered my bloodstream. I knew I had less than 10 seconds before I was going to be completely out, so I just relaxed into it and embraced it.
When I first started to regain consciousness, my mouth was extremely dry and I felt nauseous. It turns out that my body is a little more sensitive to anesthesia and it took me over an hour + some Narcan (a medication used for opioid overdose) for me to finally become conscious. The supervising nurse gave me a little bit more pain meds along with a cracker and some water to go with the meds as I continued to slowly recover. I was in the room for another 1.25 hours before the nurse asked me if I was ready to go home. I got dressed, and under the supervision of the nurse, rolled slowly to my side and slowly sat up. I just felt soreness in my back which was expected, but no pain in my right hamstring yet. The nurse then slowly had me stand up to transfer to a wheelchair.
I stood up from the bed. It was surreal. For the first time in over 2 and a half years, there was practically no pain in my right hamstring and I could stand up fully straight. “How do you feel?” the nurse asked me. “I’m doing okay so far,” I answered, trying not to get too emotional in the moment. I sat down in the wheelchair, and the nurse wheeled me out to my dad who was waiting to pick me up. I carefully got into the car, the nurse gave some last instructions, and then we drove home.
The rest of the post-operative day was spent lying on my sofa on my back, as I was too tired/nauseous to do much of anything else. I attempted to consume some juice but ended up having two separate bouts of vomiting, likely secondary to the nausea from the anesthesia still slowly wearing off. Even though my back was sore, I could tell in the few times I got up to walk around that everything overall was feeling better and I would probably need a few days for the soreness at the incision site to resolve. With each passing day, I slowly started to walk a little bit more around the house. For the first week, I didn’t leave the house at all just to give my body time to adjust.
Once I was one week out from surgery, I decided to try walking outside for the first time. Twice a day, I would leave my house to walk. On my walks, I would feel the warmth of the daytime sun, note the golden glow of the evening sunsets and breathe the fresh air throughout. It sure felt nice to step outside and be able to walk around with minimal to no nerve related pain. Of course, my legs are more de-conditioned than I anticipated, which has led to the muscles in my calves and feet being initially rather sore. Still, it is nice to start to feel like I can choose the terms of my discomfort rather than my body choosing the terms for me.
In my email inbox, an email caught my eye: an ad for the 2022 Silicon Valley Turkey Trot. For those who don’t know, I have raced the 5k at this turkey trot in person every Thanksgiving since 2013 (except for 2020 and 2021 when it was not hosted in person). This race has always held a special place in my heart, as it has been the site of all of my most exciting road 5k races (including my all-time PR of 15:27). It has also served as my post-collegiate fall championship race as the fast course draws many collegiates and post-collegiates from the community and even outside the state trying to clock a fast time. The ad stated that this year’s Silicon Valley Turkey Trot would return in person for the first time since the pandemic started.
The email heading, included for aesthetics purposes with the storytelling (no, I will not be winning an Apple Watch lol)
I did some math. Based on my recovery timeline, I will be able to start return to sport mid-October if no complications arise. This would put me 5-6 weeks out from this year’s Silicon Valley Turkey Trot. I guess where I’m going with this last bit is that I have set my sights on the streets of downtown San Jose this November at the three-year anniversary month of my initial injury. There’s probably no better way to celebrate both the return of this race in person and my return to racing. Now as the month of July closes, I can say that this is the most hopeful I’ve felt in a long time. I no longer feel like I am just struggling endlessly with chronic pain and wondering if I’ll ever live a normal life or run pain-free again.
The turning point has arrived, and the comeback starts now. Let’s get this bread. 🍞
Thanks for following along, stay tuned for the next chapter!
Addendum
This section is just to explore a little more of my rehabilitation process. This month, rehabilitation is centered around my surgery. Pre-operative rehabilitation mainly included biking every other day in order to maintain a baseline level of lower leg strength and endurance, as well as for my mental health. Prone press-ups and lateral sidebending were performed intermittently based on how often I remembered to do them and the level of irritability of my symptoms. I also threw in a few one-minute front planks here and there, not enough to make gains but enough to maintain a perceived minimum level of trunk strength (i.e. being able to hold the planks without any increases in baseline symptoms).
For undergoing surgery, a few pre-operative tests needed to be completed in order to go forward with the surgery. Preoperative blood work was done, along with an EKG, COVID test and a MRSA test. The EKG was performed to ensure that I was not going into surgery with an abnormal heart rhythm, blood work was to examine certain qualities within the blood that influence blood clotting, and the COVID and MRSA tests were done to ensure that I was not bringing any infectious disease to the hospital. The night before the surgery and the morning of the surgery, I also had to shower using an antibacterial soap with specific use instructions. The purpose of this soap was to help minimize risk of wound infection post-surgery.
This month’s post-operative rehabilitation had two main goals: establish bed mobility techniques to minimize soreness in my back and gradually reintroduce physical activity. For bed mobility, this included figuring out how to transfer from standing to lying on my back to sleep, rolling, scooting side to side, and getting out of bed. As for the reintroduction of physical activity, this came through the form of daily walks. Starting on day 2 post-operative, I was instructed to get up and walk around 2-3x/day, 5-10 minutes each time as tolerated. This is to continue until I reach my 2 week post-operative follow-up with my surgeon which will be early next month. For total walking volume, this puts the daily maximum at no more than 30 minutes for now. Other restrictions in place for the first 2 weeks include no excessive bending, lifting > 10 lb. or twisting excessively, the rationale being to minimize stress on the newly operated back in these early stages. My surgeon told me to start post-operative rehabilitation at 4 weeks post-operative so that’s the guideline that I’m going to go off of. Given the nature of the surgery, each month from now until November will look pretty drastically different with what I’m able to do from a rehab standpoint, but the important thing is that I don’t rush the process and try to return too soon.
