Scary Times Ahead

There are some scary times ahead in the Doll-House (this name is a play on my new last name and how I affectionately refer to my residence).

My hubby jokes that I married a broken man. He & his father are both accident-prone and have a tendency to be clumsy. My father-in-law has fallen off of a ladder, twice, and broken ribs and during the subsequent hospital stays ended up with pneumonia. He also narrowly avoided death by e.coli when consuming some bad Dole lettuce a few years back (but boy, was he excited about the Dateline spot he got after an investigation was done). My hubby regularly has scrapes and dings from adventures at work or disc golfing and has broken several bones in his childhood. He's had two hernia surgeries before he was 25 and had a cyst develop on his tailbone (which were caused by his unfailing work ethic & desire to do things at 110%).

But despite all this, I sometimes forget just how broken my man is.

It's not all my fault! I swear. Yes, I'm forgetful and scatterbrained, but some of the blame can be laid at the foot of my husband's tolerance for pain. He has a high pain tolerance. I'm pretty sure I have a low one, but other than a small tattoo and some teeth pain once, I haven't had much opportunity to test my limits.

His tolerance for pain is directly linked to his addiction for things he likes. If he likes something, he's going to do it, pain schmain. So it's easy for me to forget just how much pain he lives with on a daily basis.

About five years ago, he was managing an auto parts store and they were increasing their inventory by a large margin. My hubby is not one to sit back & let the underlings do things while he sits cozy in an office, so of course he was helping to unload all of this freight. Much of which was heavy pallets of oil, batteries, brake cores, and various other things that require heavy lifting.

Around that time his lower back started to hurt. At first he brushed it off, thinking it would go away on its own. When it didn't, he saw various doctors. All of whom told him, "Pfffaw. You're too young to have back pain. Do some exercises." He diligently attended physical therapy, but his enthusiasm waned when nothing got better. Chiropractic visits either had him feeling nothing or he felt better for a minute, and then later on was worse off.

Fast forward to last August, when we went on our fateful annual camping trip to the Barrens (it's in Wisconsin. Enough said.). We aren't cool enough (old enough? No, rich enough!) to own a camper yet, so we do the tent-thing. I had a humongous 3-room tent that we stuffed with a queen-size air mattress and ourselves. The first night after sleeping on the air mattress, B was in serious pain. After the second night, I think he was ready to kill me and steal the car and go back home.

Shortly after our camping trip, the back pain became severe enough where complaints from him became more frequent. I'm not saying he never complained before, but the frequency definitely went up after we got back. Then his leg started going numb and alternating with shooting pains.

Mulishly stubborn Russian/Irish/German mutt that he is, it took a little bit before he went to see a doctor about it. This time, however, the doctors believed him. We figured that in previous visits, he didn't act like he was in pain at all. So it was probably hard for the docs to take him seriously. Now the pain was definitely showing. He was walking like an old man and stumbling on his numb leg like a drunken pirate. After an x-ray showed that something was up with his L5-S1 disc in his spine, the doc finally referred him for an MRI.

The results? My hubby's been living with a ruptured/herniated/degenerative disc for the past several years. The leg pain comes from the nerves in his spine being pinched between the L5 and S1 vertabrae.

This picture of fusion surgery doesn't show a fusion of the same bones the Big B

will need fused but does point out his vertabrae so you can see where it hurts.

After several months of trying this (both injected & oral cortizone treatments) or telling the doctors that he had already tried that, he finally got recommended for spinal surgery. Specifically, fusion of his L5-S1 vertabrae. My dad's lived with similar back pain all of his life, from issues in the same spot. He had the cutting surgery, where instead of fusing the bones they went in and cut out the scar tissue from the ruptured disc. He still has the back pain, but the shooting pains in his legs and numbness from the nerve pinching did go away.

But in my poor broken husband's case, fusion is the best chance at eliminating the pain or reducing to an amount that he can live with. We finally got the ok from our medical provider and in less than 2 weeks he will be going under the knife and hopefully making a big change for the better.

He's nervous; I'm nervous. He's stressed; I'm stressed. This has led to the bickering level to rise a bit around the Doll-House lately (see my previous post here about our "discussions"). We're both trying to be better about it--he to be less grouchy no matter how cranky his pain is making him, and me to remember that he is dealing with constant pain that never goes away so I should cut him some slack in the crabbiness department.

Of course, me being the eternally hopeful optimist that I am, I can see the silver lining in all this. His degenerative disc is a good spot for fusion--he shouldn't lose much mobility (and hopefully will lose no distance off of his disc golf drives!)

Here's what it'll look like after the surgery.



Also, B will be off work for several weeks at a minimum while his healing happens (it won't be fully fused for 6 months). While we're both a little apprehensive at what this means for our financial budget, there is a bright side:

We both get extended periods of time off of work!

Granted, he'll be mostly physically incapacitated the entire time and I'll still have school to attend, homework to complete, and all of the household chores. But still! More than a week off from work for me is a treat, no matter what's going on. And we get to spend it together.

My hopes are that we'll gain a newfound appreciation for each other during this time. I'll realize just how much stuff he does around the house that I don't give him credit for, and he'll see that I'm practically Florence Nightingale in the flesh.

Or we'll end up killing each other. My money's on moi, not just because it's me, but because how fast can a man in a back brace run, really?