MY STORY (Part 5) SURGERY

“Does anyone ever get all the way to number 1?” I said.
He laughed and said, “No dear, they rarely get to 99.”

I laughed and looked up into his eyes. Then I asked my second question.
“Will someone hold my hand?”

Those were my two questions. Really stupid questions if you think about it. Most people might ask. ‘Am I going to hurt?” or “What happens if I feel the whole thing and can’t tell you?” Or geez even “Do you think I will wake up?”

Nope, I asked if anyone had ever counted from 99 all the way to 1. See, I’m even a smart aleck when facing death. But while the first question didn’t matter in the scheme of life, the second one did.

A nurse held my hand while the anesthesiologist inserted his needle into my IV, putting me to sleep. He said I could start counting….and I never got the chance. I never made it to 99. He was right.

I woke up in a weird room 11 hours later. My surgery was supposed to be a seven-hour deal…not eleven. However the surgeon had taken his time and by taking his time he was confident that he was able to get the entire tumor out. At some point he came in and explained that he had gotten the tumor out, but that he had also had to remove some bones in my back and a nerve along one of my ribs…the nerve where the tumor had started.

I had hoped for a few things upon waking up. I wanted to be able to feel my legs, both of them…right down to my toes and I wanted to be able to walk normally again and I wanted to be able to run and lift my daughter.

I didn’t get any of those wishes, but I was VERY grateful that I did wake up.


(Sharing these pictures is really hard for me...just know that. Not because of the fat rolls...hahaha But because it hurts me to look at them. Anyway, the cool thing about the pictures are the markings on my back....Notice how they marked each of my vertebrae in purple marker.)

(Sorry for the pictures, but some of you asked for them. Here they are. I have some of the inside of my too. However, since I don't want to gross any of you out, I'm not posting them. If you want to see them, you will have to ask for them and I'll send you an e-mail.)

I spent nine days in the hospital with my mom by my side the whole time. Nine horrific days. I was told that on day three I needed to sit up and try to stand. This may seem like an easy task, but now I know better. My spinal cord had spent the last several years…smashed. My body was used to that and the nerves in my spinal cord had adjusted to being crushed. Now there wasn’t any pressure on them and they were going haywire. My feet were burning, my legs were tingling, my back was KILLING me and I was cold, so very very cold.

On day three a horrible man showed up. He was the physical therapist…and the only person who took care of me during my hospital stay…that I actually hated.

It took me several tries but I managed to sit on the side of the bed. The pain was so intense and I immediately got light headed. I sat there for a little while, trying to adjust to being upright and then I stood up (with lots of assistance). I was only up for moment before I had to sit back down, that was al I could handle.

That night he wanted me to walk. I kept trying to tell him that the doctor told me to take it easy, to do this slowing…at my own rate. This man had no idea what I had been through and what I was feeling…he also didn’t know the definition of “taking it easy”.

I still couldn’t feel my legs completely. Taking the tumor out didn’t bring all or even most of the sensations back to my legs. I could feel my right leg and except for the tingling in the toes my right legs seemed fine, however my whole left leg was filled with stabbing pains, and I could barely feel my foot. There were also those issues with my nerves freaking out and the intense pain I now had in my back.

However he pushed and kept pushing and through tears I tried to tell him how much pain I was in and that my leg had sharp stabbing pains and that I was feeling faint and nauseated. He didn’t care. Not one bit. He just kept pushing, acting like I was being a baby. Just take a step, just do it, he would say. I had my hands on the walker in front of me and I was standing up. I told the horrible man that I really didn’t feel well and that I was light headed, and he still pushed me to take that step. So what did I do?

I took that step

And I passed out. I was in so much pain and my spinal cord was going haywire, so I passed out. Even after that happened he still treated me as if I were faking it. Oh I hated that man.

The next morning a girl I knew from college named Leiloni (I’m not sure that is how she spelled her name), came into my room. She was a physical therapist and was there to help me walk. I had been saved! I knew this girl, I had gone to church with this girl years before while in college. I knew she had a big heart and I knew she would care. With her and another woman they taught me how to take those steps, at my bodies own pace. And they helped me to be proud of myself with every baby step I took.

There were a lot of things I hated about that hospital stay. I hated being in so much pain, I hated that I had no appetite, I hated that I was reliant on other people and I hated that I was away from my daughter. But the biggest thing I hated was the nightmares and day-mares. The morphine injections were causing me to have these horrific hallucinations during the day and my nightmares were so bad that I was afraid to go to sleep. There was one night that I stayed up talking to my mom almost all night…all because I was terrified to sleep. It was awful.

One of the other big things I hated about the hospital was that I was cold the whole time I was there. My room was an oven (my poor mom), but my body couldn’t or wouldn’t regulate my temperature, so I froze and kept asking my mom to turn the heat up.

My mom stayed with me the whole time I was in the hospital. She took better care of me than the nurses…in fact, the nurses probably loves having her there because they didn’t have to wait on me much. I loved having her there though. It gave me such comfort to know that I wasn’t left alone for long periods of time. I loved the company and I loved that my mom was willing to sacrifice so much to be there.

And she was sick the whole time I was in the hospital.

Learning how to walk again was one of the hardest things about my hospital stay and the months and years that followed. I had gone into surgery with no pain. Before my surgery I had experienced maybe 3 backaches in my entire life. I wasn’t used to being in pain because, well, I had never had to endure pain. Not to this extent anyway. And even with the strong pain pills I was given and the morphine injections, the pain was almost more than I could take. I had pain from the surgical site, muscle pain from all of the muscles being cut in my back, nerve pain on my side, nerve pain in my right toes and my whole left leg and I had a constant headache.

It was hell. I didn’t expect this going into surgery, no one had told me what to expect after. In a way I’m glad they didn’t because I wouldn’t have been so calm going into surgery if I had known what it would bring.

Or how long the pain would last…like forever!

I learned to walk, albeit with a walker. I could walk down the hall, past a fish tank and back to my room. When I could do that, and eat a cracker, they released me. They released me into my mothers care.

I spent nine days at my parents’ house with my mom by my side day and night. On day 18, post surgery I went home.




The next weeks and months were filled with frustrations, anguish and lots of tears. This wasn’t how I wanted my life to be. I felt like a cripple! I felt worse than when the tumor was there, and while I was glad it was gone, I was angry for what it had done to my body and what I was now faced with.

I pushed myself….hard! I had a little girl to take care of. I was quickly running out of leave time and we were almost completely out of money. I had a mortgage to pay and a job to do. So to prove myself I could do it. I went back to work.




The surgeon had told me I would be off work for 3-6 months. I went back to work part-time at 3 and a half WEEKS. I would go to work, get what I could finished, last as long as I could and then go home and crash for the evening. Looking back now I know with all my heart that if I hadn’t gone back to work so soon, if I hadn’t pushed myself so hard to get my life back to normal. I don’t’ think I ever would have.

I was also going to physical therapy at the time, I was back using my cane and trying so very hard to learn to walk without it. With the new limitations I had been dealt I was scared when I didn’t have that cane in my hand. My left foot was numb on the outside, so when I was walking I couldn’t feel when my foot hit the ground until I shifted my weight and the tissue and bones (which did have some feeling) told my brain I had reached the ground. So I tripped a lot, I misjudged surfaces all of the time and I fell….a LOT. It was humiliating and frustrating. When I did finally ditch the cane I walked really slow and stared at the ground constantly to make sure I didn’t misjudge. Because if I did misjudge and I stepped too hard, or I stumbled I would get these intense electrical shocks that traveled up my leg, up my back and to my brain.

And boy did they hurt.

Part 6 coming soon


(All of the pictures in this post were taken in the days and weeks after my surgery)