Yesterday I had my very first steroid injection to help relieve the neck pain that has persisted for the last year and a half. That is how long the pain has been bad to the point where I can't look up and/or to the right without excruciating pain. My neck has been bad however since a snowtubing accident 30 years ago. One night my girlfriend Lona and I were walking through the neighborhood and noticed some kids tubing down a large hill a couple of blocks from her parent's house. I asked one of the kids if I could try and he handed me his tube. With beer in hand, I sat down on the tube cross-legged and gave myself a push down the long steep hill. "Whooo hooo!" I shouted as I picked up speed. Suddenly I was in mid-air, upside-down, going backwards, but still seated cross-legged on the large tube with beer in hand. I never saw it, but I had hit a fairly large jump that the kids skillfully made at the bottom of the hill which had launched me airborne and rotated me 180 degrees. Blammm!!! I saw lightning as the back of my head hit the ground first and jammed my chin down into my chest. I think I blacked out for a second and when I came to my neck swelled up huge, I couldn't move it for days and I have had a bad neck ever since.
After years of chiropractors and an attempt at physical therapy last year to try and alleviate the ever worsening pain and headaches, I decided to find out what is really going on up there. My general doctor sent me to get an MRI...moderate to severe degeneration in the C4/C5/C6 area. He then referred me to a neurosurgeon to see if I needed surgery. I waited nervously for the doctor to come in...a little anxious about possible neck surgery but excited that I may finally be able to do something to get rid of my pain. When the doctor came in she made it apparent right away that I was not a candidate yet for surgery and thus I was nothing but a damn nuisance to her...her day was not going to get any better until I was out of her sight. She quickly went over my MRI, showed me where the bone spurs were and which nerves are being pinched, and then did her best to get me the f*ck out of her office. "Do I have to spend the rest of my life with this incredible pain?" I asked. "I don't know, but surgery is not an option for you right now." Almost on hindsight as she was fleeing from the room she grabbed a brochure on pain clinics from a file cabinet and shoved it in my hand. Basically it was just: Leave! And don't come back until you have massive tingling in your arms and/or legs!
I walked out sadly in a daze. I went back to work, looked up the clinic in the brochure but they were not in my insurance network. I found another pain clinic and made an appointment with them. They offered a variety of pain-solutions that did not include surgery, but their big seller seemed to be CT Scan guided steroid injections into the spine which is what they recommended to me. Fine, lets go for it. So I made a 7 am appointment for a couple weeks later. I got there at 6:55 am, waited nervously for 15 minutes before they told me I was supposed to be in the other office down the hall. Okay. I waited another 30 minutes on the group W bench while filling out various forms and playing with the pencils on the bench there.
Eventually a nurse called me back, took my vitals, and asked if I wanted an IV with general anesthesia or just local. While I have great affection for general anesthesia I did not have a driver so I had to opt for the local. Then she asked me if I wanted nitrous oxide during the procedure. "Excuse me?" I asked, surprised. She told me they use nitrous if you want and then asked if I have ever had it. I enthusiastically told her "Yes!" … that I'd had it at the dentist, as well as out in the parking lot at numerous Grateful Dead concerts. She looked at me strangely trying to decide if she had heard me right, and then she nodded and gave me one of those fake laughs you give when someone tells you a joke that you don't understand but you laugh anyways pretending that you understand so that you don't look stupid.
Awkward, but we moved on and I was no longer nervous...I was excited about the nitrous and sure I could handle anything with that fun little aid. Next the doctor came in for 20 seconds and asked me where my neck hurt. I pointed to the back right area of my neck, he made a little 'X' where I pointed to and walked out. Really? That's it? Did he even look at my MRI? Was he just going by what I said?? Is this guy a quack? I thought this was an exact science, not some pin the tale on the donkey while blindfolded game! They said it might not work the first time, or ever...well of course not if you're just gonna start jabbing drugs into the spine wherever the patient points to!
I was nervous again as they brought me into the surgery-like room and had me lay face down on the table with a hole on one end for my face. They gave me the nitrous tube to fit over my nose and I greedily took huge hits while waiting for Dr. Douchebag to start stabbing me. They told me they had the nitrous on strong, and asked me if the nitrous was too strong or should they turn it down? I was about to ask if they could turn it up higher but suddenly I felt very happy and carefree. I started to float away in a sea of happy thoughts...farther and farther away until I was completely gone....swimming...deeper and deeper...on a long, possibly enlightened journey. I could have been at the bottom of the sea in Ringo's Octopus's Garden in the shade for all I knew.
I wanted to learn more about this world but suddenly my happy thoughts turn to stark fear as I heard from far away up at the surface of the ocean a stern voice yelling "Stop it! Stop it! We have a very serious situation here!!" It was the doctor. What? What the f*ck was going on?! I could feel hands pressing on me and people yelling. I felt guilty. What had I done? I was sure I heard somebody say something about mopping up the blood. I thought I was in the ER...like something terribly wrong had happened and they had moved me to the hospital. It seemed like I had been out of my mind for hours. As I slowly came to I opened my eyes and noticed the nitrous tube below me but now detached from my nose...I was breathing just 'O' again and not 'N2O'. Two much kinder voices belonging to a guy and a girl talked to me gently and told me it was over. The doctor was gone. They wheeled a gurney next to me and had me roll over onto my back on the count of 3. I could not remember how to count to 3 so I just rolled over when it seemed appropriate while they helped.
I asked what the hell happened...how long was I 'gone'...what had gone wrong? The lady said the procedure only took 3 or 4 minutes, but that I had suddenly started lifting my head up while the needle was in my neck...and that I was waving my arms around while they tried to restrain me. Well of course I thought...I was swimming around at the bottom of the ocean. She said that the doctor was not mad at me, just that he didn't want me flopping around with that needle in my spine. She explained that my flopping was my body's natural, instinctive reaction to having a needle stuck in my neck, and that my mind could not stop that reaction because I was elsewhere. The guy just smiled and said: "You went to another planet." His name tag read 'Doug' and I liked him instantly. He seemed like the type who would leave his keys in the injection room on purpose, so that when it was time for everyone to leave at the end of the day he could hang back and huff some nitrous.
Doug wheeled me into a recovery room and introduced me to a waiting nurse. "Maggie, this is Tim. He's just had a spinal injection with nitrous and he's a little out of it." I thought about that for a second. Something did not seem right. Was her name really Maggie? Was my name really Tim? Looking squarely at Doug's name tag for effect I said: "Hey Steve, I think my name is Peter." He looked confused, looked at his chart, and then apologized and reintroduced me to Maggie. Still with the 'Maggie'. I was flashing back to 1997...I shuddered. Once we got the name thing straightened out she brought me some juice and crackers. I noticed my 'One fish, two fish, red fish, blue fish' boxers making an appearance from out of the side of my blue gown and wondered if that had been the catalyst for my nitrous-induced swim with the yellow submarine. She looked down and noticed too and said that she would get out and let me get dressed as she pointed to my bag of clothes and then closed the curtain.
I was still woozy but got dressed and told them I was fine. They told me I should make an appointment for two weeks from now in case it did not work and I needed another injection. I wanted to play it cool so that the offer of nitrous still stood. I didn't want to be blackballed from the nitrous. I walked out of there in a daze, started my car and sat there listening to the Half-Assed Morning show for about 5 minutes and laughed my full-ass off the whole time...was it this funny or was I still loopy? They were making Ross stand out on the Washington Avenue bridge with his childhood pillow named Lisa dressed in a bra and panties while listeners honked at him. I'm pretty sure it was funny. Then I noticed a large shiny spoon on the pavement right on the front/left side of my car. I was backed into a space facing the building and I had to have stepped right over this giant spoon to get to my driver door. The sun was glinting off it and blinding me. How did I NOT see this spoon?? Wait...was it really there? I decided not to find out, but as I pulled out I made sure to pull sharply to the right as to not run over it.
When I got to work at 8:30 am I was still woozy and a bit nauseous. I read the sheet they gave me listing all of the side effects of steroids. Great...for the next 3-7 days I was going to have to wonder if insomnia was from the steroids, or just the normal occasional insomnia. Was my heartburn from the steroids or that large pizza with red peppers and red wine. Normally when heartburn hits about once a month I just pop a Ranitidine and it is gone almost immediately...I picture Ranitidine as a little pharmaceutical Pac-Man, cruising around inside of me chomping up stomach acid.
Let's see what other side effects I have to contend with...is my flushed face from the injection, or from saying something silly in front of a bunch of people at a work meeting. Are my fatigue and muscle/joint aches from the steroids or from the normal wear and tear of being 52. Are my headaches from the shot or just the usual ones I get from my sore neck. Is my water retention and increased appetite from the steroids or just me getting fat because it's fun to eat a lot sometimes. Are my mood swings including sudden rage 'roid-rage from the injection or just a normal reaction to my kids ignoring me for the 30th time when I tell them to get ready for bed. Is my nausea from the shot or just another flu bug the kids brought home from school. Well...it didn't list anything too serious like 'feelings of depression, thoughts of suicide, constipation, diarrhea, or death' like you hear in all the commercials. And I was pretty sure I wasn't going to suddenly be afflicted with racism like Roseanne Barr.
I didn't feel good though...nauseous and not able to focus very well. I decided to put in 4 hours of work and then go home at 12:30 pm. On the way home I was listening to a 1989 Grateful Dead concert and they went into a particularly trippy 'drums/space'. I was at a stop light and I thought about what would happen if the Mickey Hart's 'beam' suddenly sent me into a nitrous flashback, flopping around in the front seat...the car behind me would start honking when the light turned green, then realize something was wrong and call an ambulance. Of course that wasn't going to happen but my mind was still weirded out.
When I got home I hadn't eaten anything all day so I had a pot-pie with a small glass of red wine and went upstairs for a nap. I didn't think I had fallen asleep but I must have because I looked at my clock after what seemed like 10 minutes and it was suddenly an hour and fifteen minutes later. Time was still playing tricks on me. Okay. I'll get up and write a blog. And here we are the next morning. I'll try and follow up with the results of the shot, the side effects, and whether or not I repeat the procedure in 2 weeks. So far so good...I had insomnia last night and I have a headache, but the neck pain seems
less than normal...from it's usual 7 down to about a 4. I have today off and I'm taking the kids to the condo to go swimming and fishing and explore the wooded peninsula. Okay...we are out of here!
