It all started innocently enough. It was Family Day Long weekend here in Alberta (third weekend in February) and I was hosting my brother and sister (and their families) for dinner. It was a bit of an oddity as I was deeply embroiled in my schoolwork so coming up for air, especially to host a dinner, was a rare thing! But I’d planned lasagna, salad, and bread. I was excited, and happily dashed off to shop for what I needed.

It was a reasonably nice weekend, for February, and I remember wearing little white lace up, slip-on Ked style shoes without socks. I was in the back of my husband’s truck unloading the groceries I had bought. Nothing too heavy or even nothing odd behaviour wise. All stuff I’d done many times before… Except this time, I slipped off the tail gate and landed flat on my feet on the asphalt. Both feet flat. It was the weirdest landing. It jarred my back and I let out a large “Oomph!” It hurt my lower back quite a lot, but I had a dinner to make, so I shook off the pain, tried stretching out my back, and carried on. The pain persisted. It sent sharp pains down my legs, but it was one of those things, one minute, it hurt, the next, I’d be fine.

Over the next few weeks, it continued to bother me, but I had things to do. School, work. I didn’t have time for back pain.

Until I couldn’t get out of bed one morning and I had no choice but to address it. The pain was unbearable. Off to the doctor I went and so started the long road of diagnosis and discovery.

The problem with generalized back pain is it is hard to figure out. Most often, it is muscular in nature. We are weak, as a society. Soft from too many hours spent in sedentary jobs, sitting on our butts watching TV, eating chips, and not out moving. I was no different. Except I knew this was different. This was brought about after I fell off the truck. Yes, I could use core strength, I didn’t doubt that at all, but this was different.

Thankfully, the x-rays agreed with me. It was skeletal in nature. But it would eighteen be months before I knew what it was that was wrong with me. Eighteen months of pain, injections in my spine, loss of feeling in my legs. Decreased movement, the pain took over my life. Took away my mobility. I put on weight. It was horrible.

Spring of 2003 I met the man who would change the course of my life, or at least the next ten years. He was tall, silver-haired, smart, funny, and had such kind eyes. He breezed in, poked, looked at the x-rays, and immediately ordered a CT scan. He said I’d likely need surgery, postulated that what I had, spondylolisthesis, may have been caused by my father having polio as a child, and my mother being asymptomatic with polio. My brother also has the same condition, however, my sister does not. He felt there was definitely a link. Anyhow, mine was severe enough, it required stabilization as my spinal cord was at risk. Surgery wait times were atrocious, however, I was looking at nine months wait time. So, we waited.

October came, and so did my surgery day. Morning came and down we went. We sat in the hallway and waited… A nurse appeared before us… “Did no one call you?” she asked, “we had to bump you for an emergency that came in. Someone was supposed to call you. I’m so sorry!” So, home we went… But two weeks later, I was back… And under the knife I went.

They told me three days. Recovery was three days… I woke up and felt like I’d been sawn in two. I had air pants on. What are air pants? Stick your finger in the neck of a balloon and then try to inflate it. It’s like that, with the sound of an air mattress pump, going around the clock. I cannot explain with words how much I detest air pants. I’ve had to wear them after every surgery from my cesarean to all four spinal surgeries. I make it my mission to get up and out of bed as fast as possible as that is the key to getting rid of the air pants.

WALKING. The air pants are a deluded method of circulating blood through the legs to prevent clots. Now, I’m sure they work for many. But I never sit still. I’m always wiggling, wriggling, and moving about because I cannot get comfortable. My air pants airlines are always tangling and setting off alarms. While I can tell you moving mere hours after a three or eight level fusion with instrumentation is blindingly painful, air pants suck so badly, I’d rather take my chances with moving.

Plus, physiotherapists are sadists who will get you out of that bed as fast as possible, which is what they did. I was in surgery for four or five hours and at the ten-hour mark, they had me standing beside my bed. I thought my eyeballs were going to pop out of my eyes. The pain from my back was bad. This pain was worse.

I questioned what I had done to myself! No pain killer in the world was taking this pain away! Unable to wrap my head around going home in three days, they finally let me sit back down and get back into bed. Officially, I had an S1 to L4 fusion with instrumentation, done with a bone graft from my hip. It was done over a long weekend and maybe that’s why things went a little sideways.

I saw the surgeon the next day, and all went well, he said. One hundred percent textbook. Perfect! Yes, my stay would be longer than three days, but not to worry, it wouldn’t be much longer than that. He’d see me in a couple days (after the holiday). His on-call staff would look after me.

Late that night, I started feeling a little off. I couldn’t put my finger on it, just weird. And the incision area felt hot. It hurt too, but it was a surgical incision, I figured that was probably normal. I was up and walking around by day four, it was painful but again, back surgery! My family was visiting me, and my husband came every day, sometimes twice. I was feeling worse, and I expressed this to the nurses, they told me I’d just had surgery, of course I wasn’t going to feel well.

This is when I started to notice my medication started changing. The antibiotics were different colours. The pain meds were different. Something was wrong. I pointed this out to one of the nurses. And got shut down. I asked for the charge nurse and told her pointedly that the pills I was given in the morning were yellow, the ones at night, which were to be the exact same ones, were white. I refused any additional medication until something was checked.

She checked. The dispensary machine had been filled incorrectly!! I’d been given the wrong medications! The machine was ‘automated’ for morning and evening dispensing, and something had gone wrong. My pills were the same as I took nothing but what was prescribed post-surgery. Thankfully, or so I was told, it was just this, and it was just a ‘dosage issue’.

Later that night, I woke in a sweat, the pain around my mid-section and back was unbearable. I wandered out into the hall, clutching the wall, begging for help. I was told to go back to bed. I refused. They finally agreed to look at me. They found my entire mid-section was brilliant red, swollen, and inflamed.

I had a major staphylococcal infection, obtained in the hospital.

Did it end there? No, it did not. I ended up with an infection in the wound itself and I spent eight long days in the hospital. However, in the end, it was 100% worth all of it. That surgery gave me my life back! I walked off fifty pounds! My back was pain free (and that part of my spine still is, after the revision I had in 2019, I expect to get a lifetime of painless enjoyment from it). It rarely bothers me, and it gave me 10 years of absolutely 100% good life. I carried my son without any issues with my back (I did tear a disc, but that was because I had no ‘give’ in my spine). It was amazing how great it felt, despite the bumpy start. My back wasn’t done with me yet, there is more to this story, but that’s a memory for another day.