Posted 17 January 2007 - 05:39 PM
I have great admiration for everyone who has written their story here as each time I’ve considered it I have then gone into an emotional slide. Then it’s become like a milestone to achieve so tonight I’m going to persevere, I hope I don’t regret it….
Well I thought I was a good responsible person, caring for my body, always a health freak, a bit of a purist after the age of 21. I had injured my knee years before which had stripped me of my fitness fanaticism or adjusted it. I found a good osteopath & went to him a few times a year; his exercises had helped a lot with my knee pain. He cracked my neck a couple of times a year as well, all part of the maintenance & their spinal philosophy. He always seemed a good practitioner. Well this one day in 2002 he cracked my neck so badly that he ruptured the C6-7 disc & sent it & the endplate of the vertebrae, which was also ripped off by the manipulation, into my spinal cord, crushing my cord. Within minutes I was in agony & could hardly breathe or move. This hit when I was leaving his home to get in my car. I was on the street tears running down my face quietly, using every meditation technique I’d learnt over 25 yrs to keep breathing when everything in my body told me i could not breathe. I had no idea how to even get to the car & I heard this very loud message “You can go in & tell him & get help & you’ll never go home again or you can get home”. I tell you I rallied everything I had & got home somehow, struggling to breathe and in excruciating agony yet somehow very calm & focussed. I got myself into a chair at home & when I could manage to I rang my partner to come home urgently, my voice just a faint whisper. I thought I may well be dead before then because of the breathing but at least it wouldn’t be a complete surprise if that was the sight on getting home to me. I'll try to be brief on the next details of the next days but I am “stoic” (a term written on my Osteo’s Clinic Notes when I first went there). I rang the Osteo urgently that night, not there, I couldn’t get out of the chair because of the pain & slept in it for the next days with my partner on the lounge keeping an eye on me & helping when needed.
I rang the next day & he was on a day off & I said that something terrible had happened in the treatment & he had to be called & ring me urgently. He didn’t ring back, his colleague did & all they wanted me to do was come in for another treatment. I sobbed into the phone that I couldn’t move or even lie down much less bend to get in a car & then be bumped around. They said he’d ring back the next morning, he didn’t, I rang him to explain that I was in agony, having trouble breathing, having showers of numbness & pins & needles all over and loss of sensation and so it went on – the sorry saga of the Osteopath who all he ever wanted to do, even after he saw how bad i was, was to recrack my neck, he offered several times, in fact this was the only thing he ever offered me apart from the TNS machine!
He told me it would all settle down of its own accord. I relied on him, not knowing that he was in complete denial and fear. I thought he must be right & that I’d get better even though I was having to sit & brace myself tucking my head down & holding my knees tightly, every time I coughed, laughed, sneezed, swallowed or else I would have not just the showers of pins & needles all over and loss of sensation but loss of movement. I couldn’t leave the house & every step was delicate & laborious, bladder urgency etc. Only when I got a TNS machine from the Osteopath could I even lie down for the first time in many days. Then one day I was standing, unable to sit & brace, when I sneezed and suddenly there was nothing, just a body that weighed 3 tonnes & could not respond to anything, a terrible feeling of shortcircuit or like when you accidentally connect to a Fax machine, & only my head functioning - dropped to the floor like a sack. Then some sensation returned & I was absolutely terrified (for those of you who never had that return of sensation I am so sorry & it has even put me off writing my story but I know in this place (this support group site) that we all do our best to embrace with great care & compassion.
I was urgently taken to a highly regarded Neurologist who saw me, picked up the phone to say “emergency” then left his busy city practice, with me in tow, to take me himself for an emergency MRI at the Hospital – you know I think that was the worst feeling of all; that really scared me so badly especially when he told me he’d only ever ordered one emergency MRI before in his whole career. The rest can be guessed - significant compression & distortion of my spinal cord. He tried to arrange emergency surgery then & there but said he would only trust one Neurosurgeon in Sydney to do such delicate surgery & he spent 1 ½ hrs trying to find him. He then let me go home if I promised to only sit in the chair & that he would ring me shortly to see if I needed to come back in that night.
The Neurosurgeon rang me next & he explained that in his view I was safer at home than in Hospital, given I was still alive after 14 days. He then said “this surgery is so delicate that I want to have 4 days off before I do it, I want to be at my peak, please understand that is best, here is my home number if you need me”. He then called me every day as did the Neurologist - they were good. Decompression & fusion were then done some days later with the intervening waiting days being full of meditation & prayer. The surgeon’s final words as I went under were “I want you to know that I think everything will be ok today, I’ll certainly be doing my best ”.
Such a long slow rehabilitation journey, I thought all would bounce back, like unkinking a hose – TADA PRESTO!!! Thought I’d be back to my career after the expected 3mths off. Not so, 4years and so many mountains to climb later - chronic neuropathic pain, neck & back pain, mechanical neck & spine problems & instability, dural tethering, so many scary symptoms & numbness that progressed over time etc, so much loss of sensation but miraculously many things functional even though terribly weak & can only do basic things & need lots of help, some bladder & bowel problems, weakness so that even opening a bag of potato chips needs scissors! etc etc. Endless things to deal with as we all know in the various unique ways that these injuries manifest.
The Neurologist was not very helpful later at all & it took me 4 yrs approx to find Rehab Specialists who can help me to make sense of the weird things my body now does. In response to my constant questions to the Neurologist over the months after surgery 'why this & why that symptom, please explain it to me so i can learn to cope & not feel crazy or be scared it will all keep getting worse', he could only say "I don't understand it. I've clawed you back from death or quadraplegia (no he was not even the surgeon) and i would hate to think that you will not go back to work & being a worthwhile functioning member of society". Nice one. I wished i could go back to work too - not to be.
So for me it has taken 4yrs of feeling incredibly alone in terms of medical understanding or context, with my physical well being so fragile; focussed on my daily exercise regime thinking that if I did even more I would surely be better but being unable to manage it physically, juggling so many physical problems & needing constant physio, acupuncture, massage. Now I’ve finally come upon Drs who actually understand & can explain it all & don’t think that by saying the words “You have Incomplete Quadraplegia” that this will mysteriously make matters worse for me & that if I could only pretend there is nothing wrong then everything would go away – how scientific; as if I haven’t struggled every day to come to terms with the things that I live with. I feel like I'm only now starting on some of the emotional healing as i come to terms with the various physical problems.
Onwards & upwards. New steps into deeper understanding & healing. For me meditation is the key & something i've done for 30 yrs andwithout it & my spirituality i would not have got through this. Resist, avoid, rip scab, hurt, cry, grow, meditate, accept, love self ... onwards. What a journey!
Sorry this is so long, very long, couldn't go briefer, tried...
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ParaforGod, on Oct 22 2006, 04:37 PM, said:
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Posted 10 December 2006 - 09:45 PM
