I was asked if I regretted the operations to repair my spine. I know there are some who haven’t read all this blog so let me start with some history. I survived Vietnam with no permanent physical injuries, but during training I fell off a pile of logs on an obstacle course and woke up in the base hospital. I was very briefly unable to use my legs and could not feel anything from the waist down. Those problems quickly went away and I thought nothing more for about it for 40 years. I had been told it was a “bad spinal bruise.” I started to have all kinds of back pain I couldn’t explain. The worst were electric shock like pains that would go down the back of my legs and at times could even put me on the floor. I think it was one of those electric shock type pains that cause me to fall down a flight of stairs breaking my ankle. I told my orthopedic surgeon that my back was hurting and about the shooting pains. He said he did not handle backs but he took a couple of x-rays and then asked me if I had ever hurt my back. I had and since the accident occurred while I was in the Army, I contacted the VA.
Now onto the history of the surgeries. The first one was done at the VA hospital in Omaha Nebraska. My surgeon told me he would not do a spinal fusion because it had been his experience that they didn’t work in my type of case and they typically led to further problems. The surgery he did relieved the electric shock type pains, but I remained in pain. Because of that pain, the VA sent me to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota. I was told there was a good chance I would lose bowel and bladder control if something wasn’t done. The reason is my spine was damaged from L1 through L5 and what you and I would call the tail bone was also damaged. Technically, it’s called the sacrum. An amazing amount of nerves come from that bone. In all, I had four surgeries with a total of approximately 46 hours on the operating table. The last operation was to replace two screws that had come loose from an earlier spinal fusion. It was unsuccessful because I now have four loose screws. I have ruled out any further surgeries unless the loose screws become a danger and have to be removed. The x-ray beside this post is the latest one of my back. You can see their heroic efforts to try and put me together again.
The question was do I regret my surgeries. Yes, I regret the last three. There’s no question that the first surgery was successful and if it had not been my fear of losing bowel and bladder control that I was told about, I would never had those last three surgeries. After my first surgery, I could still get around fairly normally, but sometimes needing a cane. Things have changed dramatically after the last three surgeries. I know from physical therapy I cannot stand any longer than four minutes. I need a walker to get around because my left leg barely functions. There is a great danger of falling. There is very little feeling left in my left foot. I have various areas where there is loss of feeling from the waist down. One area that I find amusing to have lost feeling is the lower part of my buttocks. It is like someone drew a line about halfway down it and below that I have lost a great deal of feeling. I have also lost some function in my right leg, but it’s not nearly as bad as the left leg. Before you feel sorry for me, I am in excellent health otherwise.
