Where Does it All Begin? Or Does it?

Let's review the basic facts again:

In any given year:

• 80% of American adults with suffer back pain
• 80% of those people's pain will be muscular, meaning it's a simple pulled muscle that can often be treated with 2-3 days bed rest and warm, moist heat.
• The other 20% will suffer from neuro-skeletal injury, meaning actual damage to a disc or other part of the skeletal frame that impinges on a nerve causing severe pain

That's where I was starting in 1992 and still am today, March of 2015 and I have not had a day without serious pain in all that time. What puzzles me, as well as all my doctors, surgeons, therapists, etc., is why, if my injury occurred in 1978, did it take 14 years for my injury to manifest itself? I use the term, "puzzles" because no one has been able to answer that question. 

To briefly recap, in 1978, with about 10 months as a volunteer firefighter, my department sent me and a couple of other guys to the state fire college. I was enrolled in the state's basic firefighting skills course. It consisted in two days of classroom learning and then two days of live fireground skills. My buddy and I were split up into two different groups.

We had undergone good training back at our department, but this way, we'd have state certification. Of the five guys in my group, I was the only one who had some decent experience on the nozzle during actual fires, so I was placed at the end of the line in the live burn exercises.

The state had procured several ramshackle houses that were to be torn down anyway and we'd use those for the practice burns. We were paired up and the training officer had the building lit off and we went to work. Because I was the last one in the sequence, I didn't have my chance until the second day of the burns and I was the last one to go in for that day. My partner in this exercise was a young kid from a small town where he was a public safety officer. If you don't know that term, it's used for people hired to be both a police officer and a firefighter. They would patrol on their shifts, but also carry their bunker gear in their vehicle and respond on a working fire. He had never been in a real fire, never been on the nozzle, and only put on an SCBA in practice.

By the time my turn on the nozzle came, the insides of our building were pretty well burned through. Walls had holes, ceiling was coming down and loose boards were all over the place. I have this rookie behind me and, since this is the last burn of the program, they arced the entire place off! I was just cracking the nozzle open when a set of SCBA bells started to ring. No, not mine, my partner's, who is supposed to stand behind me taking the hose pressure off me. Instead, he drops the hose and starts to yell, "I'm outta air!! Outta air! I'm gonna die! I'm gonna die," and turns around and dives out the front door.

So here I am with 100psi at the tip and the training officer to my left at about 3-4 feet. If I drop the hose, he's a dead man! So, I tuck the hose between my arm and my side and try to knock down the fire that was directly in front of us. As I do, I work to close the bale slowly, but the pressure is still high and as I take a side-step, my left leg falls through a burned-out section of the floor. I collapse into the hole up to my crotch with my right leg curled up and I feel this explosion of pain in my left knee. (Did he say "knee?" I thought this was about a back injury!) Don't worry, it is.

Now I'm really up shit's creek. I've hurt my knee, I look like a little-person dressed as a firefighter and I'm trying to close down this nozzle before I let it go flying around the room. I finally manage to do so and take a breath. I close the nozzle and drop the hose. Still wearing my air-mask I begin yelling, "I'm hurt! I'm hurt!" 

For some reason, the officer thinks I'm saying, "I'm tired, I'm tired." We're both yelling at each other and not getting anywhere. I somehow manage to lift my damaged leg out of the hole and role over to grasp the edge of a wall. Favoring my left leg, I hobble over to the front door, tear my mask off and tried to walk out the door. One step and I fell over and down the three steps to the ground, where several firefighters were milling around. Next thing I know, someone is cutting up the left leg of my bunker pants and getting the SCBA and coat off me.

By this time, my left knee is the size of a seedless watermelon. I'm packaged up and shipped off to the local Emergency Room. X-rays were shot, however, even today, they don't serve injuries to cartilage and soft tissues well. I was placed in a knee immobilizer and sent back the the hotel with instructions to see my orthopedist upon my return to Greensboro.

As it turns out, from 1978 through 1992, everyone involved, doctors, physical therapists, etc. all believed that the major injury I suffered was blowing out my left knee. The following December, I had the first of what wound up being five surgeries on that knee. However, throughout it all, we never suspected that there was another injury hiding somewhere in my lower lumbar spine.

Until one day in September 1992.....

It's Been a Long Time & I Have No Excuses!

If you had read my first several posts to this Blog, I humbly ask for your forgiveness. This subject is far too important for me to have left it wallow in the shadows. I'm very sorry. There are no excuses for me to offer other than a foolish error on my part. That's it. But now that I'm back here, I plan on making good and continuing the blog.

When I read over the last post I made in 2013, I have been in touch with my friend, "Fred" since that time. Fred has had a very painful and difficult time with his back injury. It cost him the job that he loved (a Florida deputy sheriff and K-9 officer) and hours and hours spent arguing with Worker's Compensation, having to hire an attorney, etc. And as bad as this sounds, it's all too common for those of us who have suffered severe back injuries. Fred faced one of the common arguments with his employer, he was milking a minor injury to get money from the county!  Yet, even providing hundreds of pages or medical documents from his doctor, from the Workman's Compensation doctor, as well as an independent third physician, the department fought with him at every turn. The MRI's and CAT scans meant nothing. Not even the fluoroscopic pictures taken during his surgery, were dismissed out of hand.

As I said, neither his injury nor his story, is unique. My situation back in 1992 did even last that long. The last day I was physically able to get out of bed and go to work was on September 15th. By mid-October, shortly after undergoing an MRI where it was determined that I had a significant herniation at L4-L5, the owner of the company where I had worked for over two years as the operations manager, sent me my check for September, hoping that I would feel better soon and good luck with my future. I could check back with him when I was able to return to work and he would be kind enough to see if there might be a position for me somewhere in the company.

What truly saved my ass was a disability policy I had purchased, against my judgement, mind you, when I was 30 years old. I figured that disability policies were for people on crutches, in wheelchairs, etc. I was an able-bodied young man, a volunteer firefighter/EMT. Why did I need this type of insurance? Who could have know that almost ten years later, that policy would help me continue to pay for a new home that I had purchased just two months earlier. Thus, if you're not too far into your journey with chronic pain, you may want follow-up with an insurance agent to see what you may be able to do to secure disability insurance.

Next: To Cut or Not To Cut - THAT is the Question!