Before Christmas Some Days in the Harbor Beach Kicking a Bit with Fins

 

The beach between the rock jetties at the Oceanside Harbor Beach is usually a mild place for a bit of exercise in the water.

I got in with the fins several times since my last post. Doing some mild kicking on the back, just trying to experience cold water again. It seems to make my low back hurt more, but I think that's what is supposed to occur on the road back to health.

It's painful fun, anyway folks. Physical therapy for my neck surgery going well; that neck exercise makes my neck hurt more too.

Don't get old. That's my main takeaway from these years. 

Nov 24. 4 p.m. OCEANSIDE HARBOR BEACH

 I must have had a fair day because I drove down to the beach before sunset. It's been so long since I entered the water. I was figuring on a frigid experience and wore my wetsuit, which is just 2 mm.

I wore the wetsuit hat which makes a big difference against cold. The tide was low, water 60 degrees, but it felt okay. All I could do was gently kick a bit with fins close to shore in the 1-2 foot waves. Only a few surfers.

This harbor beach was the place where I started my neck rehab after the first neck fusion in 2009. This day was only a 15-minute soak.

The easy kicking was too much for the low back but my neck was okay. I'm writing this December 9th.

My neck fusion this time, C-3 to C-4, now is connected to the existing C-5, C-6, to C-7. I've been doing the neck physical therapy but it has hurt me more. I finally figured that with my decreased ability to rotate the head, I should only do a minimal effort on my neck isometrics. This has improved the neck muscle pain and headaches from it a great deal.

So, there is neck progress possible after fusion of C-3 through C-7. The low back is continuously killing me with pain and spasms. I am so sick of flexeril, but it works. Side effects are undesirable.

I'll post a couple of photos. In one photo, the burned down pier building is visible in the distance--the end of the pier. The city will rebuild it. 

POST-OP RECUPERATING

 Wow! I had the cervical surgery September 16th. Did you know that you need to report to the hospital at 5 a.m.?  The surgeon did a great job on my cervical area. At 68 years old, the physical recovery from surgery pain and swelling is quite difficult. 

Upon getting settled in a hospital bed, all hell breaks loose with agonizing pain. That first week after surgery truly is horrible, with needing to rise and walk, then fretting over how many tablets of pain medication one is allotted. I think I'm close to 4 weeks out and the neck pinched nerves are gone on my left side and greatly reduced on my right side. I'm not experiencing the tingling down the right arm as prior. 

I'm reduced to 1/3rd to 1/2 of pain meds per day, which is great. So much less than pre-op for several years. It's a long road. I hear the call of salt water in my future.

"The first time you quit is the last time you try."

YESTERDAY WAS A GOOD DAY

     I had an appointment with a third surgeon yesterday, a younger guy at the orthopedic practice at which I had my 2 previous spine surgeries, way back in 2014 and 2009.

The 2009 cervical fusion may wear out after a decade and this is what occurred with me. I have known this for about 15 years but the medical pain system grinds slowly...s l o w l y.

After reviewing the CD discs that I brought with me, the surgeon told me that he would fix my neck!!! He would submit to insurance and schedule me if insurance approved!!!

Although the pain in my neck and low back can be maddening throughout the day, I am so pleased that there may be some resolution.

My back, he agreed, is also compressed, as we knew for years but he told me just one thing at a time. That's NOT a good answer when one asks if one can get another surgery for the back in a year or so. But I'll accept it. 

Continue to get more opinions; be organized; bring your MRIs with you to your appointments. Good luck.

SURE, YOUR SPINAL NERVE PAIN CAN AND DOES SHIFT AROUND A BIT, SO WHY DO PAIN PROVIDERS DISBELIEVE YOU?

One would think that those health care professionals whose task it is to diagnose and mitigate pain conditions, to order tests and scans would include a list of physicians, physician's assistants specializing in pain management, and the interventional physician who performed the hoped-for pain-relieving epidural injections of various types, and the top dog: the pain surgeon. To me it seems common sense to be aware that subtle movements in a patient's vertebral discs, thus causing vertebrae to move forward and backward. Where would this movement occur? The neck, primarily, as it is a complex plexus of rotation, circular twisting, looking up and down, and the discs in play would be expected to interact with cervical nerves that would lead to PAIN.

The low back rotates and moves front and back and interplays with discs and nerves. So, physicians, I urge you to give time to your pain patient in the exam room. It is most likely that he has jumped through several insurance hoops only to see you--the specialist. Assume he tells the truth. Assume he is NOT a person faking a serious pain condition to obtain pain meds that he will sell on the street. 

Make a plan to ameliorate the pain of the patient. Also, since financial assistance may be available for the patient, fill out his insurance/disability form he requests of you.  

I CANNOT TAKE IT ANY MORE!

 When does it hit me the most? What time of the day? The early afternoon hours, 1-2 p.m., the hours when I have been behaving with my medicine, usually reading in the recliner chair. I'm on schedule but I've been switching ice packs around on my neck and mostly right lumbar back. They stop diverting my attention from the pain and I pull out the TENS unit electrodes. I stick 2 pads on 3 different areas where this grating, gnawing, often sharp ice-pick pain and get as much mileage from them as I can. 

Don't ask me anything during these hours; I am curt, angry, and at times teary because it won't stop. 

MY NERVE PAIN TODAY...IT IS DRIVING ME CRAZY

 Throughout the day and night, I rotate the various treatment modalities that I have available to me in a thankless search for diminishment of pain. Pain is evil and insidious. It prevails. I postpone the medicine in the morning as long as I can. That is actually an error of judgement because it is best to stay ahead of pain. Catching up and needing 2 pills to dull pain is not ideal but the doctor and government pharmacy policies make it such that I must count hours and tablets and make the supply last 24 hours. I get no  slack from pharmacy at VA.

Even though the doctor may transmit an order to fill and ship to me a few days ahead of time, the pharmacy Nazis will not respect and fill the doctor's order. As a pharmacist, does that rub me raw? Oh, yes.

Pinched nerves...so darn common in the back and neck...can we just try to take the pressure off the squished nerve in hope of relief?

Ice packs, TENS unit sticky patches to up to 3 areas at a time for me, 1/2 a tablet, lumbar hard supports, cervical soft or hard supports to push my fat head up to try to relieve pressure on my cervical discs and nerves, another tablet, then lie down on the Tweeter device for 10 minutes for pressure relief.

Then, repeat the whole  circuit. I call it my day in retirement....

Enough.

THE TOOLS WE USE TO ENDURE NERVE PAIN: TENS UNITS

             While we wait patiently over long months for scans and surgeries, I use the TENS units that the VA issues to us if the doctor orders it. 

After years of using the VA-issued TENS units, I can honestly say that TENS therapy is garbage. At best I get my mind taken off the pain temporarily, replaced by the shocky feeling at the sites of the stick-on pads.

The pads burn and irritate the skin...it itches like the scabies. One then needs to ask for a medium to high potency steroid cream from the doctor to rub into the spots to heal the skin and eliminate the itch.

November 12, 2025

I do not have this blog listed as 'findable' in a Google search, but this post got 92 views, compared to zero to 3 for my typical post. So, I need to update my opinion on TENS units.

I do use my TENS unit 4 sticky electrode pads every day. So, they are doing something positive for me.

DISTRACTION from the nerve pain is the best thing that they do!

In my average day, pills, ice pads, soft braces, hard braces, and putting devices on & removing them, I switch what goes on top of what; I replace the ice packs with fresh ones every hour or two; and I eventually arrive at my box of TENS unit supplies from the VA. 

The power output is minimal. I recharge batteries every night. The adhesive pads do not last many uses. The pads slip from their positions and the wire-pin-connections always become separated. I am not allotted enough pads so I use half-assed, not-very-sticky pads daily. 

BUT, when the brand new pads get stuck on my lumbar spots, and batteries are fresh, and the electrical wires from the device controller to the pad-pin connection is intact, the stinging mild shock of the pads does help me to distract my brain a little for an hour or so. This update is intended to tell patients to 'give them a try.'

THANK GOODNESS FOR MY PRIMARY VA DOCTOR

 The VA is much better for meds and braces and shots, etc.  The big problem with the VA system is they don't have the personnel to perform your procedures: epidurals, surgeries, MRIs, consults with specialists.

I have been waiting for 3 months to get MRIs at VA La Jolla. I am set for June 27th, 2024.  BUT, then I'll have to wait 'til pigs fly to be seen again by an Orthopedic Surgeon. I HOPE I can get some spinal surgeries to ease or eliminate the pinched nerve neck torture. How long could that wait be? 

Life with all these malfunctions isn't really life. Fingers crossed.

THE THING ABOUT NERVES...

Nerves don't like to be cut or squashed. Think of them as threads for tiny nerves and as strings or ropes, perhaps as thick as your pinkie finger, for the spinal cord.

The spinal nerves that exit the spine at different levels, in my case a problem nerve forks off the spinal cord at T-1, thoracic #1.  That nerve travels to my right upper back, then down the right arm. It is not happy because it is being compressed and pushed out of whack. The nerve causes pain along the path but mostly at my right neck in the back. It's torture when the twist or pressure on it is raging. An interesting result is that when I reach or extend my right arm to pick something up from the floor or reach to grab a glass from an upper cabinet shelf, the nerve screams at me because it is not long enough to do the job.

It seems simple to me: Do surgery to increase the space between discs or vertebrae that are involved. Don't make the guy or gal wait 5 years needing to take meds to ameliorate severe pain. 

I know that you have a relative or friend with a similar condition. They meet up with physicians who have been bombarded with new guidelines that limit their prescribing.  Nowadays, a prescriber's hands are tied by HMO rules, VA rules, pharmacists butting into their business, and what-all. The government wants doctors to treat pain patients from a mindset that their patients are faking and are physically or psychologically dependent on opioids. What garbage!

Sure, the DEA let Florida and West Virginia run wild for years with cash 'pain clinics,' but it's a big country with only a few percent of the pain patients being sketchy. Our lives as patients are wasted; fix us, dammit. Please.

THE TEN-YEAR RE-DO OF YOUR SPINAL SURGERY

 May 1, 2024

In 2009, I finally got an Orthopedic Surgeon to fuse my neck from the front. She did C5-C6-C7.

She has been retired for several years. Damn! Before the surgery, she advised me that after 10 years I might need another surgery above or below the bones involved. She advised me that up to 25% of patients with that surgery get movement of spinal parts causing stresses over time that necessitate a second surgery. 

My pain began at about 8 years after surgery. As you know, people get old and parts wear out--like cars. 

Why don't today's surgeons know about the ten-year re-do? I have been to a neurosurgeon and an orthopedic surgeon. No takers.

This is just my neck; I have a myriad of problems with the lumbar back. I found excitement at age 20,21,22 riding bulls in practice rodeo. One bull had a personal problem with me and, after covering him the 8 seconds, rammed me into a steel corral fence. There was and end of steel pipe projecting into the ring and he threw me into it. I think he was trying to impale me. Well, one broken rib and a mysterious right lumbar injury that is a painful daily reminder of that ride. 

The only actual, formal rodeo in which I participated in was the Camp Pendleton Rodeo in 1979. Two broken lumbar vertebrae and a twisted neck from my one and only ride on a bareback bucking horse came from it. 

Oh, to be a young man again! Would I ride the rodeo? Try for a second go-round? I hate to say it, but maybe....

PINCHED NERVES, ANYONE?

 😢

I know that there are more than a few million of you out there suffering with the pain from a pinched nerve or multiple nerves. 

I am sorry that you have to deal with this; Regrettably, many of you can be treated with surgery to resolve your pressure-on-nerve conditions. But...the hated insurance. The equivocal surgeon. The waiting list for a procedure. 

Have you given up? You've considered it, I know. That invisible BURN of a pinched nerve can be the cause of those drips of tears from your eyes. What have you tried...?

Stretching and light exercises.

Hot packs...Cold packs.

Anti-inflammatory drugs.

TENS Units to try to distract you from pain by attaching a small shock to the skin.

Epidural injections of various types.

X-rays and MRI scans.

Did you get visits to an interested physician along the rocky trail who prescribed a strong medication to ease your pain? I sure hope so.  

The prevailing assumption propagated by the CDC, Centers for Disease Control; FDA, Food & Drug Administration; Congress, and the myriad of directors of HMOs around the country became 'everybody is a drug abuser, an addict, a conniver who wants pain pills to resell them. These leaders are dead wrong and I wish they all suffer a serious pinched nerve that radiates down a limb. 

More on nerves next time.