So here is the chronicle of the my back injury which happened last February. Obviously no one likes to read about other people’s aches and pains so I pledged not to whine about it online until I was healed. Little did I realize that would put me into 2006. But today, for the first time in over six months, I actually stepped back into the realm of cardio exercise while doing my physical therapy. I’m not healed but it’s a milestone, so here’s the spiel.
The original injury happened while in aerial dance class—I over-extended my back while on the trapeze and sat out the rest of the class but didn’t think too much about it at the time. A few days later I did a 7-mile run as part of my sprint triathlon training schedule and wound up in a ton of pain the next day. A series of doctor visits and physical therapy sessions followed but I still was unable to stand (much less run, bike, swim, etc.) for long without pretty significant pain, occasionally accompanied by sciatic nerve pain and numbness going down my left leg, and back spasms. Fun stuff. And as soon as I appeared to make any improvement I would inevitably do something stupid and re-injure myself — the day I went jet-skiing on the Wisconsin River being a prime example.
Enter the spine specialist who finally sends me to get an MRI. The details of that evening are worth telling because I always like to point out a) grand-scale incompetence and b) ironic situations. So I arrive at the clinic wearing gym clothes and, notably, an under-wire bra (sorry for the details, you can see where this is going). The nurse tells me to remove my shoes and get in the big magnet. Not good. After removing aforementioned undergarment, no thanks to the nurse, I gave her a CD to play. (Sting, of course.) She gave me headphones, the MRI started, and a static-y "Delilah" comes on over the radio through the headphones. Turns out not only is Delilah the host of a sappy radio show full of sob-story romantic music requests, but she also has a very similar voice to the MRI nurse. Thus I heard no Sting, none of the nurse’s instruction and a medley of tunes from the Lionel Richie/REO Speedwagon/Julio Iglesias genre. After it was over the nurse came over to the MRI machine and told me she really enjoyed the CD (apparently it was playing – just not for me) and then she handed it back to me, again, next to the big magnet. Magnets are about as good for CDs as they are for computer drives. I somehow managed to escape the clinic and called my mom to tell her how happy I was some progress had been made, maladroit nurses aside.
Twenty minutes later I stopped at a stop light and the woman behind me (another nurse, go figure) did not. Getting rear-ended is about as good for lower back pain as magnets are for CDs. To top it all off when I mentioned I had back pain both the nurse and police officer who came to the scene looked at me like I was out to commit insurance fraud. So ends that day.
Eventually the results came back: L4/5 and L5/S1 disks were bulging and the L4/5 had an annular tear as well. This was later refuted by a west-coast spine specialist who works with my brother JeffO and claimed I had the healthy spine and disks of a 17-yr. old. If you know how to read an MRI, here are the two telling frames (supposedly). Third opinions welcome. At any rate, I’m told it’s all a matter of continued physical therapy. So that accounts for the lack of wakeboarding, hiking, running, (pick anything active and fun) posts this summer on the blog. Better luck next summer.
