I was not always a herniated disc. When we were born, I started as a wholesomely plump, perfectly placed, healthy disc. I showed up well in scans and gave nearby nerves a respectful berth. So how did we get here: 3 months of our year disrupted and bedridden?
When we turned 18, Amit started a company, went on trips, started working out. These things hurt— curled in airplanes, bent over devices, hunched at desks— but I was always there to curl, bend, and hunch harder.
When we turned 19, Amit started a running habit. It’s like Nancy says: being taken for granted is the gift you give the ones you love. Thus was my reward for doing my job perfectly for decades: being taken for granted. Amit barely knew I existed. He often thought of business, Apple products, new technology, but never of me. At 19, he started to run for miles. I didn’t want to admit I couldn’t take it. When it got tough, I gritted my teeth and leaned on everyone around me to suffer through it. I thought about how lots of spines had it way worse (at least Amit didn’t play football), how all the other valiant body parts (the noble brain, the gritty stomach, my old buddy the steady heart) were all counting on me.
After mile 2 of each run, I’d say, “Ahem. Perhaps you should stop? Or get cushier shoes? Or stretch?” But he would speed up, thinking, “I’m tired of being pudgy. If I could have a robot body, I would. But for now I’m stuck with this. No pain, no gain!”
To hear Amit call us pudgy, to hear he’d prefer to discard me for a robot spine— that hurt! Those words hurt more than all the hours of lifting with me versus with our legs. I let out a few tears in the form of stress fractures (that’s how vertebrae cry). But he couldn’t hear me cry. How could I speak so he could hear?
Finally, I threw myself into my neighbors. The nerves and muscles screamed, “Mosh pit time!” The back muscles jumped up and down and spasmed in violent dance at all hours of the night.
Amit went to the doctor who diagnosed us with a herniated disc. We were bedridden for weeks, then diligently took posture classes, learned the Alexander method. It seemed we’d reached an understanding. Amit was now aware of me. Even if he couldn’t hear me, he was trying to learn how to listen.
Years passed, then decades. Amit founded new companies, traveled to new countries. When he said, “Sit,” I said, “How many hours?” When he said, “Walk,” I said, “How many miles?” When he said, “Shoulder my luggage,” I said, “How many useless objects can you stuff into how many bags?” I saw that I was an object to him, to be enslaved, maintained, a deficit in the bank account, an obligation on the task list, ideally neither seen nor heard. Our relationship was purely transactional.
Amit’s friends would compliment him, “You’re so fit. Look at your arms… And you don’t have any fat.” We did have nice arms, but their view struck me as biased. Internals like me, the elegant nerves, the humble gut, etc never got compliments.
When we were 42, Amit went surfing even though the waves were high. He ignored my niggle of doubt. Nancy had already driven us all the way to the break. We paddled out.
“It’s all up to me,” I groaned as I kept us afloat. But who can win against the ocean? A huge wave pounded against me, and I tumbled in the surf. Battered and bruised, I succumbed to the bashing of the waves. I bowed to the ocean’s power.
After being struck, scraped, and bruised by the surfboard, we crawled out of the water, and Nancy drove us home. Nancy inspected the skin of our back and said, “When anything weird happens to me at all, like I land weird when bouldering or feel a twinge when fencing, I stop and don’t do anything else that day.”
Amit did not share this philosophy. Instead, he decided to go on a hike! Up and down the mountain we went. When we were walking home, Nancy was driving home with some guests when she saw us and picked us up. We could barely get into the car, but we stifled our groans of pain so as not to startle our guests. We can’t blame the hike, or the ocean. It was the years of accumulated neglect. I may be a bone fragment, but I was dying of a broken heart.
The next day, we couldn’t get out of bed. But we had to pee. Maybe the urge would miraculously fade… Maybe the pain would ease… Maybe we could wait until after Nancy returned with the muscle relaxers… We waited and waited until finally we got up and lurched to the bathroom. Things were really hurting. One moment we were standing over the toilet, and the next moment, we were on the floor and Nancy was leaning over us.
One friend who was visiting us was a doctor and took our pulse. “You’re pale and sweaty.”
Amit wondered, “How can I be pale when I’m brown?”
Nancy explained what she’d witnessed, “I called to you before leaving and you sounded weird, so I barged into the bathroom just in time to see you faint. You fell into my arms and I lowered you to the ground.”
Our friend said, “You should’ve heard Nancy’s chilling screams for help!”
We couldn’t walk, but Amit kept saying, “Don’t call an ambulance.” Nancy called our dad, a retired surgeon. Our dad convinced us, “Go to the hospital.” Amit said, “Let’s ask our neighbor where to go because he works in healthcare.” Our neighbor said, “Go to this ER; it’s good with back issues.”
Nancy and her friends got us up the stairs and into the car. The doctor friend said, “Maybe you should crawl,” but Amit wouldn’t stoop to this indignity. We slowly thumped up the stairs and heaved ourselves into the car with our arms.
At the ER, we waited for 6 hours. We finally got an upper back scan and painkillers that didn’t do much, even though they were supposedly the most potent drugs. Nancy got us our favorite snacks, reminded the staff of our existence, and scolded them for bringing over wheelchairs when our main symptom was that we couldn’t sit up without excruciating pain. We finally went home. I don’t know how we got out of the car and down the stairs into the house.
The next day, Amit was worried we couldn’t get up to go to the bathroom again but refused to use a bedpan and forced us to walk to the bathroom again. We didn’t faint this time, but the agony was intense. Every night, we started to cramp despite all the painkillers, heating pads, and ice packs. We’d try to suffer through it as long as possible, kneading our muscles ourselves, fruitlessly, until finally we’d wake Nancy for help. Amit doesn’t like to accept help, but we needed it. Nancy got us supplies and bathed us with hot and cold towels. She nursed us night and day. After hours of back spasms we’d shout, “How are you asleep!” Nancy would wake to massage us, apply heating pads, pull our legs. Amit decided to move to another bedroom so we wouldn’t disturb her as much, but then he convinced her to switch into the other bedroom too.
We started going to physical therapy and Amit started pushing himself to do the exercises for hours a day. Everyone said to walk but we barely could. Nancy brought us food and every time she walked by us she’d take the opportunity to pull our legs and massage our muscles to help relax and relieve the pressure on our nerves that shot pain down our leg. Amit felt ashamed we couldn’t help with any chores or packing.
Nancy packed up the house so we could go on our planned next excursion. She was worried about us flying part of the journey alone because we couldn’t walk or carry anything. “You look strong so people won’t know you’re injured without a cane,” so she got us three different foldable canes, one of which Amit deemed acceptable because it was well-designed.
At the airport, we got to board earlier because of the wheelchair. Despite all the physical therapy and Amit’s diligent exercising for a month, we weren’t improving. Amit paid for the lay flat first class seat so that we wouldn’t be in as much pain during the first leg of the flight. At first Nancy also got first class but then couldn’t sit with us because they wouldn’t allow her cat to be in first. She said she’d come visit us during the flight but only came once.
We made a stop in SF to get a full body MRI that Amit’s investor had a deal for. Then it was onto the second leg of the flight. Sitting for hours was agony. We tried taking many walks during the flight and holding ourselves hovering off the seat with our arms, but it was the worst pain we’d had yet. When our parents received us at the airport, they were shocked seeing us wheeled out in such a state. At least we had the cane.
Our dad called his doctor friends to get us seen right away. Amit marveled, “What would we do without my dad? Without him the MRI would’ve taken an extra 3 months. The ER only did the upper back and not the lower back. Then the SF MRI wasn’t full resolution. All the appointments are backed up for months.”
A month after the accident, we could barely walk or sit. Each morning, we stumbled to the bathroom and collapsed on the ground to meditate, play with the cat, and check our phone. We brushed our teeth on our knees because it hurt to stand.
Amit finally admitted he had to cancel his writing workshop which he’d been waiting to do for years. He couldn’t wait for Nancy to join us and she canceled her plans too.
With our dad calling in favors, we got 2 epidurals over a period of 3 weeks. Each shot did help the pain. We started being able to hobble down the driveway before having to turn back.
Our original summer plans were canceled, so we were continuing to work on our startup. Every day, we lay on our back for hours, holding our laptop over us in the air. It was hard to take calls or type.
Nancy said, “You should rearrange your desk setup assuming this is going to be the new normal.’
Amit said, “No, I’ll be back in no time!”
“It’s been more than a month so I’d assume it’ll be at least another month.”
Amit’s family rearranged the monitor and desk so that we could lie more comfortably. Amit designed the setup so that he lay under a table on a mattress, and he ordered a platform that swiveled his computer in front of his face for calls.
The pain was improving, but we still couldn’t walk. Worse, Amit started to feel a tingling down our leg and in our foot, even when lying down. “What if I’m like this forever?”
Our dad said, “Now that we’ve done 2 epidurals, the next step we can try is surgery.” It seemed like a safe, minor surgery that would only take an hour. Amit read a paper on it and learned that people in their 50s didn’t get herniated discs anymore because their disc juice dried up by then.
As we signed up for the surgery, Amit said, “I’m scared I waited too long to get the surgery, that it’s too late.” Luckily, once again our dad was able to call in favors to get us seen in time. All the doctors were Indian and our dad went in to see if he also knew the anesthesiologist. The surgeon made a small incision in our back and used tiny cameras and knives to remove the pieces of me that had come out of the tear.
Afterwards, we ate cookies, fluffernutter sandwiches, Indian treats, and rested at home. It hurt to lay on our back where the stitches were, but we were walking the same day. Thank goodness for minimally invasive surgery! The hospital scheduled an x-ray but relented when our dad asked why. They also charged us extra bills and then told us not to pay those because they were supposed to bounce back to insurance. Now we know not to be overeager with bill payments. After the fact, Amit also learned that sleeping in the recovery room after surgery cost $12 per minute, but luckily insurance had kicked in by then.
Amit learned that, to protect me, there were basic exercises he had to avoid from now on. Want to guess what they are?
They are deadlifts, crunches, and situps, which we often used to do. Nancy was to do all the lifting for the next few months. Gone were the days when we singlehandedly packed up the car for our trips! Amit felt a bit low so Nancy asked, “What’s your positive vision for the future with your back?”
We sent an atheist prayer into the universe, “Dear god, please let Amit have a healthy body, and find exercises like swimming that are good for strengthening his back, and build a relationship with a physical therapy expert that’ll teach him the right things to do so that he can nurture and care for himself and live a long, full life where he adores his spine…”
Although Amit still felt guilt and shame for not being able to lift things and Nancy having to do the lifting and trash removal, he allowed part of himself to enjoy not having to lift things too.
Amit found a pool. When we got in, he was worried we’d be too slow. We hadn’t been in the water since this all started months ago. We got into the slow lane and found that we were doing ok. We did a few laps. A pool attendant waved us over, “You’re swimming so fast that you have to get into the faster lane.”
Amit smiled. “No, I’m injured so I should go slower.”