Personal Narrative: My Experience With Spinal Fusion Surgery

I had been cringing about day for so long. I was completely terrified to go into that room. As the door opened I was exposed to a cold draft and I could feel the dense air. The day I was told this needed to be done was horrifying, and now it’s actually happening. They rolled me over to a new bed and I looked around seeing doctors everywhere. There was a table that they rolled next to me and on it was things that I can’t even explain. They put a green mask on me with tubes going through both sides of it. They told me I’d get drowsy and all of the sudden I closed my eyes and it was happening. I was getting knee surgery.

In 2008, I worked for a company that was a leader in the sale of post-surgical, external fitting lumbar and cervical bone-stimulation devices for spinal fusion surgeries. These devices ensured a complete spinal fusion by stimulating osteoblasts in the area of the bone grafting material inserted between two vertebrae. That same year, Medtronic, one of the world’s leaders in the sale of medical devices, received FDA approval to market two smaller kits of Infuse, bone grafting material that could be inserted during surgery to ensure a complete spinal fusion, for use in spinal fusion surgeries (http://newsroom.medtronic.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=251324&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1774116). What did this mean? It meant that bone-stimulation devices, such as the one I sold, were not going to be favored by doctors anymore. Infuse and other bone morphogenetic proteins (BMP) were going to be the favored product for insuring a complete spinal fusion since they were innovative and worked 99% of the times without the patient having to worry about wearing an external fixture after surgery. For me, this meant I was about to lose a lot of accounts. I was never warned of this development.

Then lo and behold my surgery occurred on July 22, 2015. It was a grueling 6-hour long surgery. I spent a week in the hospital and I was in tremendous pain for weeks afterwards. I was not able to enjoy my summer like everyone else, as I was stuck in bed for the entire time. But guess what. My back was straight. It was over. No more brace. No more looking crooked and feeling self-conscious about it. My mind was finally free.

Imagine waking up every morning stiff, all your muscles in your body soar, extremely tired and on the verge of exhaustion. The simple task of taking a shower and getting dressed makes you need to lay down for just a few minutes and rest. Your legs ache from a short walk up the stairs last night on your way to bed, as if you ran a marathon in your sleep, and your skin literally hurts to the touch of your clothes as they rub against you. Your blood pressure is up and you can feel the pain emanating from every part of your body. You can’t, for the life of you, find your keys as they hang from the keychain in your hand, because the pain and agitation you are feeling all over has clouded your mind. You are finding

I wake up and I am not entirely sure where I am at. I am laying in a bed and rolling around as someone is pushing me. The door infront of me opens manually and I am pushed through the door still not knowing what is going on. I have a sling on my arm, but I cannot feel it at all. My right arm is numb from the shoulder down, but as I am rolled into my room I see my mother, father, and grandma sitting and waiting on me. I remember now; I just came out of shoulder surgery that could possibly make or break my baseball career. The doctor comes in and explained what happened in the operating room, and explains that everything went very well. He had no complications and that after I get food in my system that I could leave. Everything was happening

I was told pretty early that he had broken his neck, but I had no idea what that really meant. I didn’t really understand what the word ‘quadriplegic‘ entailed. In my mind, my interpretation was that one-day I would help my dad walk again. I envisioned him taking slow, unsteady steps, but once I learned what paralysis really meant that image was shattered. Never walk again. The words took a while to sink in, but my mind was already reeling. I became more aware of the adaptations I was going to have to make as his daughter, the alterations in the routine and activities that directly affected my life, and my fear of the unknown. This was not the type of problem that had a clear-cut solution. Life doesn’t come with an instruction manual. Conflicts arise everyday that demand determination and creative thinking to solve. I’ve learned how to step up to those tasks and take the

September 2003 is a date that has impacted my life in various ways. Every person is a book in process, we have a beginning, make critical choices, have a climax, but with no wonder how it will completely end. When I was six years old, I didn’t realize I was going to start my American Dream. I was not aware that I was leaving my love ones, my best friend, and my house to live in a country where I knew and had nothing. Crossing the scorching deserts in the middle of the night, I had no idea my life was actually going to change for the better. Being brought from Mexico, I was directly enrolled in Pactolus Elementary School in North Carolina without any basic knowledge of the English language. As a new student, I was afraid to speak because I did not know

When I woke up on April 3rd, 2011, I didn’t expect that later in the day, my whole life would be changed forever. I was aware, however that something was wrong.

I had my fourth knee surgery this past winter and my goal is to let go of my fear. I have one more sports season left before graduation. If I complete the full season, it will be the first time since my sophomore year that I have done so. I know that I will not be able to achieve the goal of playing a full season without letting go of my fear, and after four consecutive seasons on the sidelines I have come to fear more then just injury. I have come to fear not having the talent to play at the high school varsity level. I fear that the coaches will only see my as a injury waiting to happen and not as an athlete. I fear a season spent worrying about what could happen oppose to whats happening in the moment. I fear another season on the sidelines.

“At first I didn’t think it was that serious, I thought the BB pellet had just irritated my eye,” Matthew said.

It’s a struggle to get out of bed sometimes, I often just sit there struggling to comprehend the sequence of events which have taken place over the past year. I mean, I’m used to this now, its normal to me, but the fact that this has happened and that I am now ‘disabled’ as people would put it is hard to get my head around. And every time I look down I’m reminded of the pain and the struggle I faced, it’s a physical scar which links me to my grueling past, a physical and emotional journey.

I was thirteen, and I had just come home from a school softball game. My friend Dalton had invited my sister and I to come and swim at the neighborhood pond. My sister stayed home, but I got permission to go. After a while of swimming, Dalton looks at me claims that he’ll jump out of a tree near the bank if I jump out. Of course, I accepted my friend’s little dare and climbed into the tree, focusing on the seven-foot-deep drop-off off of the bank. Regrettably, I didn’t jump far enough. My right leg landed in the drop-off, but my left leg hit the clay, which caused all of my weight to shift to my left foot. I felt an immense pain in my ankle and started screaming while crawling over to the bank as Dalton ran to get my mom. After I finally made it to the emergency room, I found that I had broken my fibula at an upward slant, which caused the upper part of the bone to slam down into my ankle.I had completely blown out every ligament and tendon on the left side of my ankle. I had to have a plate and four screws implanted into my fibula along with the surgical repair of all of my ligaments and tendons. The entire ordeal left me extremely interested in the human body, and this interest was heightened when I had to get my appendix removed a few months later and again when I took Anatomy and

“Peter, will you please stop bouncing around like a jumping bean and concentrate?” My mum asked. “This is what I do when I concentrate, “I answered.

When I was twelve years old, I obtained my first surgery. I recall feeling frightened yet overwhelmed with the idea of receiving surgery not to mention the risks. My supportive mother was glued to me through the challenging period. Looking back, shoes were squeaking against a polished white floor as individuals with blue scrubs were rushing to ill humans. Beeping machines following the creaky noise when doors open and close. A mixed odor of chemicals, medicine, and sanitizer to prevent viruses from diffusion. An extreme amount of pain on the left portion of my stomach placed me in between life and death.

Up front, I knew of the 2 percent chance that spinal fusion wouldn’t be mandatory, but I held onto that possibility. It was agonizing to hear that I would never be able to bend my spine again. Had there been some reason to place the blame on me for this obstacle, this journey would have been much more manageable. Instead, I had no one to blame but God. I couldn’t believe that He would let my own body fail me. To make problems worse, I was an avid gymnast, and two titanium rods and twenty screws were about to take my passion away from me. After countless shed tears, I convinced myself that the surgery was going to help rather than hurt me. In the weeks leading up to my operation, it took every ounce of courage in my hundred pound body to be strong. And because of my bravery during this particular time-span, every obstacle I’ve faced since has appeared as a gust of wind rather than a