Hello everyone! After an eventful year, I am finally BACK ;) at blogging. It seems surreal that is has been TWO YEARS since my spinal fusion. While I have come a long way in many aspects, there is definitely still room for improvement, which I will talk all about in this article.
Because I am a positive person and all, I will cover the successes I have had in my recovery. So first off, my sharp pain is almost gone. I still have dull back aches that I feel most of the time, but the debilitating, sharp, just laid-on-a-pinecone, feelings are basically nonexistent. This feels amazing because I can focus on things other than pain.
Second, I have, since my last blog post, traveled beyond the borders of my state. I took a trip to Boston and D.C. to tour some colleges, which, traveling from Arizona, is pretty far. Regardless, I found the 5-hour plane ride, and the marathon we walked everyday do-able. This was especially exciting, as I am looking at colleges on the east coast where long distance walking will be a necessity. Seeing that I am not in too much pain, I feel ready to get BACK to business (sorry, I can’t help it).
Third, I CAN WALK UP/DOWN STAIRS. This doesn’t sound exciting, but my school has a sketchy elevator that sometimes moves before the doors close (think Tower of Terror) that I can finally avoid.
Now, because the world is not rainbows and unicorns, I will admit there have been some struggles for me throughout recovery. The achey-pain is still there and does affect my ability to sit through my classes (the hard-back chairs are uncomfortable). Also, by the end of the day, my shoulder and hip pain is rather extreme and often winds me as I am crawling into bed. Upon asking my doctor about these issues, he said it is pretty consistent with spinal fusion patients because they are finding new balance and using unused muscles that were long dormant. Also, because my spine developed crookedly (is that a word?), my legs developed at different lengths to compensate for the curve. Once matters were “straightened out,” the leg-length discrepancy became apparent and contributed to my hip and lower-back pain.
My doctor recommended another bout of physical therapy to help strengthen my core and lower the strain on my lower back vertebrae. I took his advice, and committed to physical therapy for 3x a week-- all. summer. long. My physical therapy place used a bunch of different methods to bring release. There were massages, dry-needling, and my favorite (this is sarcasm, it is just hard to detect in writing): cupping.
Well as I am sure anyone reading this knows, in Summer 2016, cupping was all the craze. The olympic swimmers received a lot of media coverage for the small discolored circles that decorated their shoulders and backs. The idea behind cupping is to bring blood flow to the muscles, allowing for faster recovery time and release of sore muscles. The amount of comparisons I got to Michael Phelps were astounding, especially considering I am not an olympian and I can barely swim. PLUS, I started cupping before the Olympics started, so, let’s be real, Michael Phelps is like me.
At physical therapy, they literally attached large suction cups to the entirety of my back, connected the cups to a vacuum-like machine, and literally pinched my skin up into like cups. It was very painful, to be honest, and subsequently left marks much darker than those on the olympians.
While I still have room for improvement, I am happy to say I have recovered tremendously throughout this year. I guess you could say adversity can’t hold me BACK*. That concludes this post; I will continue to update this blog.
Alaine
*Disclaimer: I am truly sorry about the back puns. They come to me in the moment, and I can’t help it!! \
