Michael’s Side Effects

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ContributorMichael, 29Read Full Bio

Biography

Michael, 30, started having back pain at age 19, but he has never really figured out why he had back pain. He had an ankle injury that never healed properly and that along with playing golf every day wore out his lower back. Mike didn’t know he needed to stretch and weight train to help protect his back from the repetitive movements of golf. Around 22 he began to suffer severe pain down his legs, and it got to a point where he needed a walker. When he finally met with surgeons he was frustrated because he wanted a surgical solution right away. He had an artificial disc implanted from L4 to L5 and L5 to S1 fused.

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ContributorMichael, 29Read Full Bio

Biography

Michael, 30, started having back pain at age 19, but he has never really figured out why he had back pain. He had an ankle injury that never healed properly and that along with playing golf every day wore out his lower back. Mike didn’t know he needed to stretch and weight train to help protect his back from the repetitive movements of golf. Around 22 he began to suffer severe pain down his legs, and it got to a point where he needed a walker. When he finally met with surgeons he was frustrated because he wanted a surgical solution right away. He had an artificial disc implanted from L4 to L5 and L5 to S1 fused.

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In physical therapy, Mike worked on his postural muscles and realigning his spine. It was slow at first. After three months he turned a corner but didn’t completely trust his back until after six months. Mike brings up that for five months before his surgery, he had been in PT. Something he is convinced help his complete recovery.

My stomach, where they cut me, that was a whole different issue. I have a lot of respect for women and C-Sections [LAUGH] after that. But, the pain in my legs was gone, which was like the first sign of relief that I felt after surgery. And then, couple hours after surgery, they had me stand up out of bed, which I thought that was absolutely insane, but I was able to do it. I was probably in the hospital for two-two nights-two and a half days, roughly. And, after that point in time, my mom had had enough of me so she had arranged for me to go to a post-op center with 24/7 nurse care to kinda take care of me for the two weeks after surgery.

I don't really remember much, to be honest with you, I mean, the meds that they had me on were pretty heavy. At that point in time, the days kinda consisted of just kinda sleeping, being able to sleep through the night, getting up, taking a shower, which was difficult at first, but got easier. They would get us up and walk us up and down the halls. I had a walker for the first two weeks or so and then after that, started going to physical therapy two weeks after surgery.

I was on my back on the training bed the whole time and it was just a lot of stretching and moving of the legs and kinda realigning-getting the shoulders back opened up and getting the spine back in order up top because I had been hunched over for so long. It was a pretty slow process for about two weeks and then after a month, then they kinda had me up and doing some agility exercises and some strengthening exercises. And, three months after surgery is when I kinda felt I turned the corner, but I still didn't trust my back yet. So, I continued to do physical therapy. I did physical therapy all the way up through six months after surgery and then six months was about the time where I felt I could trust my back.

I also had five months of physical therapy before surgery. It wasn't giving me the relief that I was looking for, but my body had its strength, like the muscles were active, things were movin', so I think that definitely helped me on the backend.

I mean, it was just-everything was slow. It's like I really had to develop my patience. Tasks that I had easily done before I had gotten to the point where I was immobile-just everything was slower. The biggest thing was I-I just didn't trust anything, right? I was too scared to apply too much pressure on any part of my body or to lift or to move or to walk or try to get upstairs quickly or downstairs quickly.

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