Derrick's Back....For Those Who've Been Asking

As some of you know, Derrick has been going through an excruciating time for the past two weeks with massive back pain. I've been occasionally posting on facebook and texting long answers to a lot of people, but I figured if I told the story here, then I can just refer people who ask to my blog so I don't have to type it all out several times :)

So exactly two weeks ago today, Derrick's back started bothering him. A nagging, seemingly worsening pain as he guided a deer hunt down in South Texas. He has had back/hip pain about once a year for about 4-5 years so he kind of assumed it was an onset of another one of those episodes and didn't worry too much about it. On that Sunday, he helped load a deer into the back of the truck, and after that, it was downhill from there. By Monday, he was in debilitating pain and couldn't even get to work in the morning. On Tuesday, we had a meeting in College Station that we had already had to cancel 2-3 times so he said he could suck it up and ride along in the reclined passenger seat and tough it out for a couple of hours. So we did that and then went for his favorite BBQ afterwards. He couldn't even get out of the truck at the BBQ place and was nearly throwing up he was in so much pain. At that point, I knew he would have to endure the 2 hour drive home and it had gotten too bad to assume it would just fix itself like it had the other times. The pain had gotten way beyond the other times. So I took him to St Joseph urgent care and he literally crawled around on his hands and knees in the clinic. They gave him a steroid shot and pain killers and muscle relaxers. The next day he felt good enough to get to work, but of course sat it his chair all day long. He thought he was getting better but by Friday, he couldn't walk again. By Sunday, he had run out of pain pills and that night was miserably horrible. 

Monday I got an appt first thing with a family practitioner to try to get some more meds fast and then to ask his recommendation for a specialist. We got an MRI lined up that afternoon and he suffered through a drive to Victoria and the painful process of getting him into the MRI machine in a position that he could bear and they could get their pictures. Tuesday they sent the MRI pics off to a highly recommended Dallas doctor but the doctor never called back on Tuesday. By Wednesday noon, we still hadn't heard back, but fortunately in the meantime, my uncle had talked to his family practitioner doctor friend who volunteered to look at the MRIs as he'd seen a lot of back injuries. He called Derrick and told him he had a pretty bad situation with a ruptured/herniated disc and that he was pretty confident that neither time nor steroid injections would fix it. Derrick and I were both on the phone calling doctors all over the place trying to get an appt for Friday but no one was available til the following week Wednesday or Thursday and he sure as heck didn't want to sit around for another week in this pain. I finally found a doctor at the Spinal Clinic of South Texas in San Antonio who had an opening Friday morning.

That brings us to today. I got him in at 9:45 and they made quick work of getting xrays and seeing the doc etc. Now most surgeons seem to be quite conservative, which I appreciate and understand, as back surgery is never an attractive option if its not the only option. He showed us the MRIs and jiminy Christmas, no wonder he's been in so much pain. He showed us the L5 vertebra and the disc that cushions it and how the disc had squirted out this blob of stuff that was completely compressing the nerve that runs through that joint. That nerve runs all the way down the back of the hamstring, knee, calf, and into the toes....hence the extreme pain, sensitive skin, charlie horses, and numbness. He said a microdiscectomy is a very likely treatment where they go in with a scope and cut out that blob of gelatin material that was causing all the pressure/pain; however, he wanted to try a steroid injection first to see if maybe it would reduce the inflammation and his body would reabsorb that substance. He said there was a 50/50 chance of that happening so he wanted to try that first. So basically, 2 more weeks of pain management and hope it gets better and if not, surgery. 

So he sent us next door for the steroid injection where we walked 50 feet from the spinal clinic to the spinal hospital....and this is where the problems began. We had checked the Spinal Clinic and both doctors names against our insurance to make sure they were in network and they were (after spending all of Thursday afternoon fighting the insurance system to try to find an in network doctor that was close and recommended by someone we knew). However, when we were going through the paperwork, the lady said we owed $370 for the shot he was getting because the facility we were standing in was not in network! So the neurosurgeon was, his clinic was, the anesthesiologist was, but the facility that the neurosurgeon and anesthesiologist worked in wasn't!! At that point, I made the decision to just order the show despite the cost to try to give my poor husband an ounce of relief...but I was afraid that if he needed surgery, we'd have to start this process all over again with a different doctor. We waited about an hour and a half for our appointment as he was an add on and they had to fit him in. Then when the insurance issue arose, we waited another hour. (I think they forgot about us for a while). They had sent us through the double doors and we were sitting on a couch where the doctors and nurses were coming and going for about a half hour when all of a sudden, the fire alarms went off! Sirens were going crazy and bright lights were strobing all over the place and everyone came pouring out of their offices and I heard the words "fire drill" once or twice. No one ever looked at us or gave us any direction so we just sat there having no idea what was going on. By this time, Derrick's nerves are a millimeter from insanity so when they called us back into the lobby to fill out more paperwork, he was about as grouchy and rude as I've ever seen him to say the least. 

Finally they called him to the back to get him ready for the procedure. Now when I say injection, I don't mean just a shot. They prepared him as though he was going into surgery. Asked a million question (a million times)...apparently no computer in any of the buildings are connected to any other computer so I can't tell you how many times they asked him if he smokes, drinks, or chews tobacco....or where his pain was...or if he was allergic to any medications...or how much he weighed. They inserted an IV and finally wheeled him away. From what I've gathered thus far from a very groggy Derrick is that they pretty much knocked him out with drugs and then lit up his back with an xray machine and stuck a long needle into his back using the live xray images to finagle it through his vertebra into the disc. The goal is for the steroids to shrink the disc up alleviating the herniated pressure on his nerve. 

They then notified me he was in recovery and finally when he was ready to go home. He woke up enough to be hungry by the time we hit Seguin and he wanted some Bill Miller chicken strips :) 

We then picked up 3 movies for the weekend and will be vegging out hoping and praying that some of the terrible pain goes away.... Not gonna lie, this whole thing has been hard on me in an emotional/physical way. You don't realize how much a 2 person team gets accomplished versus a one person. I unlock the door, he lets the dogs out of their kennel in the backyard, I start lunch, he washes dishes, I find something good to watch on TV, he takes out the trash etc etc. When its one person, I feel like I've been running around like a chicken with my head cut off for 2 weeks now. Plus, he is my partner in crime at work too and of course with the TV show....its all terrible timing and only heightens the stress we've been under to meet deadlines....but it will all work out in the end. For now, I just hate seeing him in pain. It makes my heart sad...my eyes welled up with tears a couple of times today when the doctor was cranking his leg around trying to identify the exact locations and sources of the pain as Derrick was crying out and wincing and holding his head in his hands. I just wanted to hit him for hurting him so bad! ....I just want him to be able to stand up straight again. 

Verse my mom shared with me today for encouragement: 

"The Lord is my rock, my fortress and my deliverer; my God is my rock, in whom I take refuge. He is my shield and the horn of my salvation, my stronghold." Psalm 18:2