Four More Days to Go

A month later after the first back surgery, I re-herniated the same disc, only worse this time. The pain was unimaginable. The morning after it happened, the pain was so intense that I wasn't sure I could get out of bed, but somehow managed to see the neurosurgeon that day. I couldn't sit in the waiting room, so the receptionist put me in an examining room, and there I could lie down on my side, the only comfortable position I had.

On Oct 22, 2018, I was hospitalized at Stanford's G2P, but the doctors were somewhat at a loss. They prescribed Lexapro again because it had worked in the past, and were puzzled about what to do with the Tylenol #4. My Stanford outpatient psychiatrist wanted me to get off of the opioids within a week. The inpatient doctors, including Stanford Pain Management, felt like this was an unrealistic goal.

I couldn't sit long enough to attend groups or even eating my meal in the dinning hall. In order to eat, I had to take breaks from sitting, lying down on my hospital bed periodically so I could again sit up. When I was discharged, I collapsed in the hallway of the hospital from the pain.