In Her Own Words!

Hello DPT Community,

Recently, a DPT student underwent surgery to alleviate pain she was having. I asked her to share her story so you could learn from her experiences. Here is her story, in her own words:

When I 22 years old and just started PT school, I was working as a PT tech at a local nursing home. One day I was instructed to go get a patient from their room for an evaluation. When I walked in the room the patient was sitting on the bed and I had to transfer him to his wheelchair to take him to the PT room. I asked his wife who was smaller than I am if she is able to transfer him to the wheelchair by herself and she replied. “Yes and my daughter helps a little.” Her daughter looked roughly 9 years old and I thought surely I can transfer him to the wheelchair myself. I am young and have been a college athlete. I was successful with transferring the patient and thought later that day my back felt a bit stiff. I woke up the next morning and could barely make it out of bed for class. I thought okay I have had aches and pains before from playing sports. I will just give it time and it will go away. Six weeks later it hadn’t gone away and it was still feeling very uncomfortable to sit or move. I went to a neurologist and found out that I have a bulging disk at level L4-L5 and a ruptured disk at level L5-S1. I was instructed to do physical therapy which I was doing with my professor’s help. The physical therapy helped my symptoms for about 14 months. I called my doctor and told him that my pain was coming back and physical therapy is just not helping anymore. He allowed me 3 epidural steroid injections. The first 2 lasted approximately 4-6 weeks. The 3rd injection lasted about 4 months. I woke up one morning and rolled over to get out of bed and bam I felt this bad pain in my back and started the same symptoms all over again. I thought okay I will just do my exercises and see if that helps and some Advil or ibuprofen. None of this helped at all and I was in so much pain I couldn’t continue to do my exercises. I found positions that would relieve my pain. I was leaning over to the left to unload that side while sitting and then began to limp because the radiating pain the progressed further and further down my leg each week. After 5 weeks of pain I finally called the doctor and said I have to see you ASAP. My appointment was scheduled one week away and I would just have to take the pain until then. As the pain just kept getting worse and worse and on the day before I was to see the doctor and get another MRI it was unbearable. I was in the most unbelievable amount of pain I had to leave class early and two of my professors had to drive me home. I thought if I can go home and find a comfortable position that I can make it to tomorrow without going to the ER like my professors had suggested. I got home and the pain was worse lying down and I could not find any position that relieved my pain even the slightest bit. I ended up going to the ER that night for pain medicine that didn’t even touch the pain but just made me tired instead. The following day I had the MRI done and saw the doctor right after that. After a short conversation he decided I was having surgery. I asked him when does he want to do the surgery and he said, “let’s do it tomorrow.” I thought “oh my gosh” things are just moving too fast but I knew that there was a big chance of being relieved of my pain immediately after surgery. I expected this because I had tried every conservative treatment that they wanted before resulting in surgery. He performed a hemilaminectomy with a microdiscectomy and when I woke up I was pain free. It was an outpatient surgery and I was required to walk, urinate, and be able to eat and drink and keep it down. During my walk I asked the nurse if we could walk further since I hadn’t walked in 6 weeks without pain. My surgery was on a Wednesday and I went home on Wednesday. The following Monday I was able to return back to school. It was the best I have felt in 2 years. Some slight discomfort was tolerable compared to the intense pain I was in before. I would recommend this surgery to anyone that has tried all options of conservative treatment. It’s has been 2 weeks later and I am doing great!

Baseball, Health Care and Statistics!

Hey DPT Community!

Who would have thought that someone would have rolled three of my loves into one thing to read? Baseball, Statistics and Health Care! This New York Times article look at how we can improve the health care system in the USA!

slesh

Amazing Technology!

OK DPT Community!

This is a much watch! Open this 60 minutes video and watch it. If this technology continues to develop, you will be on the edge of an amazing revolution in rehabilitation. I remember 25 years ago working with patients who had suffered spinal cord injuries giving them a lesson in the pathomechanics of their injury. They would always ask if the spinal cord would just regrow? Of course, my answer was the wires have been cut and there is no way for the brain to communicate with the body. But NOW THERE IS!

Together with you in His service,

slesh