Hey Guys, Kelly Update

 

**This started to turn into a book, so this is just a chapter, mostly about my back. I’ll write more later. If you don’t want to read it please don’t feel obligated to, I just need to get it out there. I don’t have that many people to talk to (which is another story).

Hey, all. It seems my life is in a constant state of flux these days and I thought I’d give you an update. If some of this is repetitive, bear with me. My memory isn’t what it used to be before I poked holes in it with alcohol, and with the depression it was never that good to begin with. 

Before I got sober (May 18, 2018) I had drunk so hard for so long that I developed epilepsy from the withdrawal. I drank myself into blackout unconsciousness every night and withdrawal would begin by the following afternoon. I was regularly having seizures and was vaguely aware of it because people told me, but I didn’t connect it with the alcohol in my pickled brain. I wouldn’t have cared if I had. 

One lovely afternoon in 2015 my son, who has autism and still lived with me, and I were coming home from the grocery store or a restaurant or something, and I pulled up in front of our house. The next thing I knew I was in an ambulance with so much pain in my back all I could do was scream about it. The next thing I knew I was being transferred from one bed to another (ambulance gurney to ER gurney) and still screaming that I couldn’t move because of the pain. The EMT was so great. He told me that he was going to count to 3 and all I had to do was tilt to my right side a
nd he would do the rest of the work (I wasn’t a light person). He counted to three, I tilted, and he and the nurse grabbed the sheet and transferred me. The next thing I knew I was being rolled down a hallway. The next thing I knew I was dimly awake in a hospital bed. And the last thing I knew they were removing a catheter and my kids (my daughter aged 23 and my son aged 19) were there to bring me home. I had apparently been there at least a week but they must have had me doped up because it seemed like overnight. I’ve been in some level of pain ever since.

This all seems like vignettes, in a circular frame surrounded by darkness, and very dim in the frame. I was seizing or doped up during the parts I don’t remember.

I had had a grand mal seizure behind the wheel while pulling up in front of my house. My autistic son was in the passenger seat. My foot was on the gas, and I plowed through 4 of my neighbors’ cars and crashed into a tree, seizing all the while. (My Subaru saved our lives). I was still seizing when the ambulance got there. I compression fractured my L1 and L2. My son got out of the car, walked home, and turned on his computer games. His sister brought him food, but he was otherwise alone. Needless to say, he still deals with the trauma. 

Here is how I know rock bottom is individual and something only sober addicts truly understand. It took three more years before I quit drinking, which I am not going to go into here. But suffice it to say that I had lost my state job and run out of unemployment. I finally decided that if God was not going to let me drink myself to death, which was my goal at that time, then I may as well get sober and start living before I injured myself some more and wound up on the street. I would have been on the street even after I got sober because I couldn’t find a job, but then came COVID. They could not proceed with evictions during that time. I was able eventually to sell my house once the market skyrocketed, paid off all my debt and had enough left over to pay my rent while I worked to pay for the rest of my needs. 

I moved to my apartment in July, 2021, so I’ve been here a little over a year. During that time my mental health has exponentially improved. I left demons behind in that place. When I moved I had a job that I loved but was pretty physical. The pain in my back forced me to work shorter and shorter hours until eventually I had to quit a couple of months ago. I spend almost all of my time with either ice packs or a heating pad, and my nest egg is shrinking fast. 

I saw my doctor while I was still working and and told her the pain management wasn’t working any more. Remember I’m an addict so I don’t want any narcotics, but I am on a mix of medication which helps with my pain, my seizures, and my PTSD/depression. She ordered some x-rays, upped a med, ordered a physical and bloodwork (going to the doctor isn’t my favorite thing and I hadn’t had a physical for quite a while), and sent me to a chiropractor. For the insurance to pay we have to go through steps…The chiropractor helped for a while, he did pop something into place which was an immediate relief, but it was short lived. I gave it the college try but eventually quit going to the chiropractor.

I went for the x-rays and an MRI. My doctor referred me to a back specialist who referred me to a surgeon. I had to wait for the surgeon appointment for about six weeks, all the while cutting my hours at work shorter and shorter. When I eventually saw him, he showed me my films.

Somewhere in there I finally had to quit the job. The accident was in 2015 and I lost the ability to work in 2022.

Our spine has 4 sections as you can see in the chart. The yellow section is the lumbar, and it is the part of the spine that supports your upper body. They are numbered L1 – L5, with L1 being at the top end. I compression fractured my L1 completely and the L2 partially, which means that the bone wasn’t broken, but the padding between the bones was crushed. 

The L1 has deteriorated to the point where it is starting to push on my spinal cord. They are astonished that the only place I have numbness is in outer three toes on both feet. I need surgery to remove the L1 and replace it with a titanium cage, and a second surgery to put pins and rods in place. They need the neurosurgeon I talked to and a vascular surgeon. I was all signed up for a few months out and received the materials for the class I will have to take pre-surgery when I got a call from the surgeon. They said that the vascular surgeon didn’t have enough experience to do the surgery and they referred me to OHSU (Oregon Health Sciences University), which is luckily only about an hour away from here. I don’t drive and will have to get medical transport, but that works. (For those who don’t know, OHSU is ranked #1 in Oregon and among the best in the nation).

Needless to say, that made me a little nervous. How am I still walking???

OHSU was very behind due to COVID, and I had to wait almost two months before I heard from them. I have an appointment on 9/28 to meet the surgeon in person and we can get the process moving from there. 

In the meantime my nest egg is dwindling fast and I’m trying to keep myself together. I can’t do housework any more and I can’t drive due to the epilepsy. I’ve had to hire a lady to come in once a week and do a clean for me and I can order groceries and have a friend who takes me on brief errands (I can’t do long ones). I do have food stamps that I can’t use for the deliveries and am working on getting unemployment.

I was told that after the surgery I will need two months to recover/do therapy, during which time I wouldn’t be allowed to work even if I could. I applied for disability a few months ago, but we all know that takes 6 months to a year, and it’s usually denied the first time around. I didn’t know but I qualify for retirement from my state job and that is in the works. I should get a first check by December and I have a boatload of money from a different program that I can roll over to another long-term retirement account (still through my employment with the state). I can draw on that account as needed. (Oregon state employee retirement system is a very complicated/convoluted thing, and I was employed there since 1991). But that’s a story for a different day.

So pray for me or send good thoughts that I come out of this ok and not crippled. The bright side is that after it’s all done my pain should be mostly gone and I should be able to work and live a normalish life. 

That’s most of the stress I’m living with at the moment. I really do need your support.