The Great Disc Explosion (condensed version)

I haven't spent much time on this topic. To be honest, I have a bit of PTSD flashback over how awful it was.

I'll give it to you straight…what we call The Great Disc Explosion of 2009 became Sooooooo excruciating that I was fully incapacitated. I had an old lady potty chair next to bed and had to be lifted into it. It became so bad I could not move at all without screaming, and then I just could not stop screaming until I went into shock from it. I found my personal breaking point; the pain line, the one that is beyond unlivable.

It probably would not have gotten so bad if my original doc (an ortho) had not blown me off (based on an MRI almost a year old, which showed a severe bulge…he considered me not a candidate for surgery, and could not/would not take aboard the possibility that something drastic had CHANGED). Because of that, it took almost three months and a personal favor from an anesthesiologist friend to get me in quickly with a very good neurosurgeon on very short notice.

So on my 41st birthday, I got a neurosurgeon. Spent the day screaming and crying, hanging off the side of my wheelchair in his office. I was in the OR two days later. The surgery relieved the most excruciating part of the pain. NEVER have I felt such immense relief! Neuro, who had been in practice for 33 years at the time, said he'd never seen any worse herniation. An enormous chunk of disc was embedded in the nerve root. The acidic material from inside the disc had been eroding the nerve root for that entire time, plus the initial damage done by the force of the impact when it blew.

I was left with painful scar tissue around the nerve root (a la EDS) and permanent nerve damage, including partial paralysis of my right calf/ankle/foot. Severe atrophy of that calf, as well.

This leg denervation made my existing Dysautonomia exceedingly severe (soleus muscle in the calf acts as '2nd heart' pushing blood upstream…non-op on the right and compromised on the left).

So yes, the pool (Oasis here in my blog) is for my back and the fallout from it, as well as my neck and associated junk (thoracic outlet syndrome, brachial neuritis and other painful stuff). The water acts as a hydrostatic full body compression garment to keep my Dysautonomia symptoms in line while I work out. It's the only think I can do. I am in bed about 70% of the day when not swimming or making jewelry.

The Herniation on MRI L5/S1 with Tarlov Cyst S2

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