How I got to where I am today...
I've probably experienced a little more pain in my life than the average person. Beginning with get run-over by a car when I was 2 - 1/2 years old--the tire literally rolling over my stomach, which led to an extended stay in the hospital for six months. Later (and still a problem now), I started passing kidney stones on a regular basis that took a month or more to pass sometimes.
I don't want to chronicle every such thing I've been through. My only point in mentioning this is because over the years I've developed a good tolerance for pain, which adds seriousness to the severe state I'm in now.
For the most part, pain and injuries aside, I've lived an active and fairly healthy life (sometimes more healthy than others). I was involved in some sports in High School, played basketball like my body needed it to live, and snow skied whenever I could in the winter. I was in the U.S. Marine Corps and after my service was over I did construction before going to college. Through my twenties and early thirties I continued to play basketball, took up softball, and golf.
Between Military service, sports, and so forth, I grew into a pretty strong man with a viking kind of build (Maybe I'm embellishing my physic a bit, but I like it, so there). Regardless of how I was built, I'm not embellishing the fact that I was a strong guy that other people looked to for help with things that required some muscle.
April 16, 2004: I was a Senior Mechanical Engineer working for a sheet metal company that contracted work from other companies. We fabricated sheet metal for things ranging from industrial air conditioners to penny sized titanium implants that holds the skull together after brain surgery. We built gumball machines and electric motorcycles. Fascinating and fun work!
We had been moving the company from one building in Van Nuys to another in Chatsworth--both in the San Fernando Valley of Southern California. For weeks we'd been hauling and rearranging massive industrial equipment, office furniture, and all the sheet metal and parts the heart could desire.
But on that day in April, the injury that would change the rest of my life happened rather innocently. There was a pallet with a bunch of miscellaneous parts on it that needed to be sorted and then stored away properly. One item on the pallet was the sheet metal frame for an electric motorcycle. By itself, it weighed probably 125 pounds and was something I could move easily by myself, but I've always been conscious of lifting things the proper way and getting help with heavier things. So I asked a co-worker to give me a hand. Knowing that I could carry it by myself, and thinking it would be even easier with another set of hands, I bent my knees to the correct lifting position, grabbed hold of the frame and stood up. Instead of standing up however, my arms jerked, my back strained, and my legs pushed my torso with shear power as the frame stayed securely on the pallet. What I didn't see was that one of the motorcycle's foot pegs had folded over and sandwiched part of the pallet in between. So the weight my body was trying to lift went from 125 pounds to something in the neighborhood of 800 pounds or more. Both of us hurt ourselves in that single second. I was much worse off. Two of the disks in my lower back between the L4-L5 and L-5-S1 vertebra bulged out and clamped the nerves in my legs with shear agony.
From that time on my back has progressively deteriorated in spite of the medical treatments I've received. The trauma to my disks caused them to start degenerating until the disk between L5-S1 was nearly non-existent and the vertebra were rubbing bone-on-bone with nerves pinched all around. At first I'd have back pain that lasted a few hours after strenuous work. Then later, it would last a day and later still, a week.
I was able to continue working until August of 2008 when the disk had finally had enough and the pain became a 24/7 companion. On November 23, 2009, I had the remaining portion of disk removed and the vertebra fused together with a large titanium bolt in the middle, but it appears that the damage to my nerves and the surrounding bones and muscles have caused further complications with no relief in sight.
That brings us up to the begining of this blog in which I'll journal my daily routine, medications, and problems...
