Try titanium instead! About ten years ago I started experiencing severe back pain.  If you haven’t had a real disc issue before it’s very hard to describe because by severe I mean that not only is it way up there on the old 1-10 scale, but it never stops.  You simply cannot escape it no matter how hard you try and it doesn’t take long before your life begins to change in other ways because of it.  I won’t try to list these in any sort of order because on their own any one of them can be devastating, but here are the things that hit me the hardest:

• Irritability: Short and snappy with everyone for any reason – to the point where if someone didn’t know me before the injury they just assumed I was a jerk by nature.
• Lack of sleep: At least without sleeping pills anyway – or some other means of numbing the pain.  I’m sure everyone knows what its like to go through some period of time where you aren’t sleeping well, try to imagine that happening but with no end in sight.
• Activities: In my case there were things I could do that didn’t make much sense to me. For example, I could get a decent lift in at the gym but then I’d be unable to stand over a cutting board and prepare a meal.  I could take out the trash but I couldn’t tie my own shoe.
• Family toll: I said I wouldn’t rank these but looking back this was the worst.  At the time, I was in so much pain that it was hard for me to see how hard this whole thing was on my family. I know there’s little I could have done differently but that doesn’t change the fact that they they all had to deal with me (my emotional state, physical limitations) for a very long time. A very difficult situation for everyone.
• Pain killers:  They kill the physical pain but create a whole new slew of issues, some physical and some emotional.  These things didn’t wreck my life (but they did make it miserable for a while) but I can see how they could have.

I followed the treatment path outlined by my doctors which involved months of physical therapy, several spinal injections and yes over a full year of Percocet (a nightmare in and of itself). Finally my surgeon decided it was time for a microdiscectomy.  I was very lucky in that I had Dr. Frederick Marciano treating me, check out who else he treated here.  Anyway, he performed the procedure and I was back to work in a few days and life was pretty good.  I won’t say perfect but I figured my pain was at that point no worse than anyone else who abused their body as much as I did 🙂

Well, about 9 months passed and things fell apart again.  With a microdiscectomy they don’t really fix anything, they just snip off the part of the disc that is protruding so you are out of pain quickly and back on your feet before you know it, but you run the risk that it will happen again. This time I didn’t mess around and went for the full L4-L5 fusion. For me, this entailed removing the disc between L4-L4 and replacing it with a titanium cage packed with cadaver bone then using 2 plates and 4 screws to lock it all down.  This wasn’t fun, let me tell you. I was off of work for about 10 weeks and I think it was maybe month #6 before I’d say I was better than before the surgery.  At about the one year mark I considered myself fully recovered and today, I’m stronger than ever!  Mind you I don’t squat 405 or bench 365 like back in the day (I can get close to those numbers though!) but that’s not because I don’t think my body can handle it, its because I simply don’t care to anymore.  My workout week is still very intense and I was able to earn two black belts following surgery as well so anyone would be hard pressed to call my story anything but a success.  That very next Xmas, I sent Dr. Marciano a card that simply said “You may not have saved me from death, but you saved my life… Thank You.”.  Holy cow, I tear up typing that even today!

I didn’t write post this to try and suggest that you run off and go for open back surgery if you have a disc problem but I did want to offer up my story for those who are already down the path or are for sure facing this kind of surgery in the near future.  Do what you doctor tells you, do your research, do your rehabilitation work.  If you do these things, the statistics should be on your side.  If you also work to strengthen the other wellness vectors that I blog about, then I firmly believe that your chances are even better than the statistics say they are 🙂  Good Luck!