What I've Learned (so far) While Recovering from Back and Neck Surgery

Back in January, I started having some numbness and weakness in my right hand and leg. I’ve had multiple sclerosis for about six years now, so my first inclination was that I was having a flare. My wife thought the same thing. So I reached out to my neurologist, who had me go get lab work. That all came back clear, so the next step was a brain MRI. Not a big deal, I have one of those yearly. So, I made the appointment, waited a couple of weeks, and had that done. It, too, came back normal, or at least unchanged since last year. So, the next step was to send me for three days of high-dose steroid infusions to see if that would settle things down. It didn’t. As a matter of fact, by this point, things were worse. My right hand was noticeably having trouble controlling my mouse, and my right leg would start to get weaker to the point that I would walk with a limp most days.

Something was causing this, but we just couldn’t figure out what. That’s when my neurologist ordered another MRI, this time of my neck and back. She mentioned the possibility of lesions in the spinal area, which could happen with MS. So, I made another MRI appointment, but this time, instead of a 35-40 minute brain scan, I had an hour and a half scan, fully submersed in an MRI machine. The brain MRI that I have yearly never bothers my claustrophobia, because I don’t go all the way into the machine. But I had to make sure they gave me something to keep me calm, because you have to be super still during these things, or they have to start over. They gave me something that pretty much knocked me out for the rest of the day. But when the results came in, there weren’t any lesions found, or maybe I should say, any new lesions found. There was evidence of older areas, but nothing new or active.

They did find something, though. Actually, they found a lot.

The MRI showed tons of stenosis and degeneration in my neck and lower back.

Look at the MRI image above. This is from my neck. I added the red arrow, but do you see the oblong thing the arrow is pointing to? That’s my spinal cord, and it’s supposed to be round. Mine is flat.

Basically, my neck and back are in bad shape, bad enough that she sent me straight to an orthopedic surgeon. I’d had no pain at all, so this caught me off guard. I had no idea anything was wrong below my neck.

I saw the surgeon the very next week, and he told me I needed surgery. Two weeks after that, I was on the table. I had a C3-6 cervical laminoplasty and an L2-5 lumbar laminotomy at the same time. Not sure what all those ten-dollar words mean, but I had two major spine surgeries at the same time with the goal of taking the pressure off my spinal cord, and hopefully relieving the numbness and weakness I was experiencing.

Over the next several weeks, I’m going to write about my recovery, a little at a time, as things occur to me. I don’t know how many of these there will be, and I’m not putting them on a schedule. They’ll come when they come. But the recovery (so far) has taught me some things I didn’t expect, and I think some of this is worth examining. Especially, this first observation. Out of all the things I may wind up discussing over the next few weeks, this one is by far the most important.

Let me start with how fast it all happened, because God’s grace and mercy are all over this.

Two weeks is not much time to prepare for major surgery. I had zero time to research the surgery, my surgeon, or anything else, really. I had to focus all of my effort on preparing my job for my absence.

For those who don’t know, I am the Executive Producer of all things radio and audio-related at Fortis Institute.

What that means practically - I produce two daily radio shows/podcasts. One I host, the other I co-host. Then I produce six weekly podcasts with a seventh coming later this year. Click here to listen to them all, if you’re interested.

All that to say, I stay kind of busy at work, and I only had two weeks to figure out how this ball keeps rolling while I’m out recovering.

I have no backup or assistant. It’s only me in my department, and that’s no one’s fault but my own. I’ve had (and still do) the ability to hire help, but I can’t find the person I’m looking for, and until then, it all falls on me. It’s not the purpose of this article, so I won’t go too deep into this, but I’m not an easy person to work for. I recognize that. I’m not mean or authoritarian, but I do expect excellence. “Good enough” has never been a standard I’m comfortable with. If the work is not excellent, then by definition it isn’t good enough. The work I have the privilege of doing is work God has given me, for the purpose of making much of Him. If I’m not giving Him the most excellent version of that work, I have failed. I won’t accept less than that, which is why it has been hard to find the right person. Pray for me, as that search continues.

In the meantime, back to my observations. I had only a short time to come up with a work plan, so my sole focus for those two weeks was that.

Then, the morning of the surgery, my wife and I noticed a few things. One person after another kept telling us how good my surgeon was. We both realized we’d never even thought to check, because it all came together so fast. There was no second opinion, I just went where I was sent. This is God’s grace, because as it turned out, he happens to be one of the best orthopedic surgeons in the country, good enough that a neurologist sent her patient to him instead of to a neurosurgeon. And I had no idea.

God also orchestrated the speed at which this all happened. He knows me better than I know myself, and I know if I had more time to think, with no pain to push me, I probably would have talked myself out of the surgery.

I’ve actually been thinking about that a lot the last few days, and one thing that’s become increasingly clear to me is the difference between knowing something and having it settled in you. Let me explain.

A child can know a stove is hot because their mother told them. They can repeat that fact back to her over and over again. They can even warn other kids to keep their hands off the stove. But the child who puts his hand on the hot burner of that stove knows the stove is hot in a way the other didn’t. Because the lesson went from just information to remember to an actual memory of something. Memory is the version that changes how he acts around a stove for the rest of his life.

I’ve spent a lot of years holding truths the first way. I knew them well enough to repeat them or teach them. But when you only know a truth in that way, it doesn’t carry much weight. You know it, but you haven’t had to live it. Usually, something has to happen before that truth becomes real to you, and most of the time, it’s something you never would have chosen.

The speed of the surgery was the first place that happened to me. The second thing has been harder to write about, and I’ve taken my time figuring out how to say it.

I’ve been married to my wife, Melissa, for twenty-three years this September. She loves me, I love her, and we’ve got three sons who turned out better than either of us deserved. It’s been a great marriage. Not one without issues, we’ve certainly had those. But quitting has never once been on the table for either of us, and the love between us has only gotten deeper over the years.

I knew all of that before this surgery. On any day, you could’ve asked me, and I would’ve told you my wife loved me. I was sure of it.

The knowing I had then (just two weeks ago) is not the knowing I have now.

This recovery has put me in a place I’ve never really been. Melissa has had to take over a lot of things I normally handle myself, and I’ve had to sit there and receive it. That’s hard for a man.

But it’s also made me see something I should’ve noticed more before. This isn’t Melissa rising to the occasion. This is Melissa. She serves because that’s who she is. I’ve known that, but this recovery has made it impossible to miss.

What I’ve watched is a woman who’ll go without sleep before she lets me lie there hurting. I watch a woman who only gets upset when I tell her to quit helping and go rest. She builds her whole day around her family without noticing she’s doing it.

Seeing all this has brought some guilt. I don’t want to be the man on the couch who needs his wife to bring him things, and I hate that she’s losing sleep because of me.

But God is using Melissa to care for me, and I’ve had to stop resisting it. That has been one of the hardest parts, because accepting her help means admitting I can’t do what she can do for me right now.

There was a low moment early on when I told her I wasn’t the man she married, and this wasn’t what she signed up for.

She told me I was right about one thing. I’m not the man she married. We’ve been married twenty-three years. Neither one of us is the same person we were then.

But she said I was dead wrong if I thought this wasn’t what she signed up for. We get older, and we go through sickness and health. The vows covered this.

She reminded me that I was there for her when she had surgery last year.

Let me say again, I’ve never doubted the love my wife has for me, or that she would do anything at all for me. What’s been new is being able to sit there and watch her do it.

God put that in front of me every day during this recovery. I’ve seen my wife do the things she’s always done.

So, I’ll say it plainly. I’m more in love with my wife than I’ve ever been in twenty-three years of marriage. It’s not because she did something to earn more love from me, but because God slowed me down, put me in a place where I couldn’t miss it, and opened my eyes enough to see what’s been true the whole time.

I don’t deserve this woman. She’s one of the greatest gifts God’s given me, and I’m more grateful for her than I know how to say, and that’s why I wanted to write this.

Most people who know me know I’m pretty transparent. There’s not a whole lot I’m unwilling to share. But I’m not writing this just for the sake of sharing it. I’m writing it because I don’t want to forget it.

I want to spend the rest of my life making sure Melissa is loved and cared for the way she’s loved and cared for me. I’m not trying to pay her back. I just don’t want to go back to the normal of two weeks ago and let this fade.

A person can go through something like major spine surgery and feel all the feelings, then start to lose sight of it when life gets easier. I don’t want that to happen. So I’m writing this down where people can see it. And if you know me personally, I’m asking you to hold me to it.

Melissa has loved me well, and I want to spend the rest of my life loving her well.

In His Service,

I talk about Jesus and the Bible a lot. Sometimes on the radio, sometimes to people who willingly show up to listen. Occasionally, I write things down.

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Before You Go

Word of mouth predates every distribution platform ever built and still outperforms them. When someone sends you an article, you’re more likely to take it seriously because you trust the person who sent it. So, you’re not starting from scratch, you already have a reason to give it your attention.

Most of the people who read this got here that way. Passing something along like that is still the most helpful thing you can do.

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