Back In Business

Now the hard work begins.

 

The Rehab Room at Bisham Abbey National Sports Centre

I will be spending many an hour in the rehab room at Bisham Abbey over the coming weeks. The last two weeks I’ve been pretty cautious with my movements, the idea was to keep a straight back mostly but doing some really gentle mobility exercises. From time to time I experienced a few twinges, which in all honesty petrified me. Even if it only lasted a couple of seconds until I realised everything was ok, it’s still so unsettling; the thing is, I know I’ll have those feelings for, well forever I guess.

The rest of my exercises at the moment revolve around core stability and activating the muscles I’ve not used for a couple of weeks whilst keeping a flat back. In a word, they’re BORING! Some of them don’t look like much, and mostly require concentration to keep my core engaged, whilst moving the appropriate limb. Some of them don’t look like much, but after a few repetitions you really start to feel the burn. I have to do some of them three times a day and I have to do them. There are no short cuts when it comes to rehab, if I miss things out, I don’t progress or run the risk of not recovering properly, that’s the bottom line.

I tell you what though, it feels great to be able to do something, and on a positive note, the nerve pain I’m experiencing down my leg seems to be responding confidently.

The person in charge of everything I do is our squad physio, Emma Batchelor. The working relationship I have with Emma is critical. I simply can’t do this by myself and I’m very much reliant on her. In all honesty it’s not something I relish, I like to be in control of what I do day to day (Emma will tell you that!) and I want to know the reason for everything we’re doing; if I had a pound for the number of times I’ve said “so, why are we doing this”.

With Emma I’m extremely lucky. Not only does she know her stuff and is very experienced, she is also completely dedicated and works every hour God sends. I often have to call her in the evening and at weekends and I know she doesn’t mind and I’m so thankful for everything she does. The other day though Emma said that she also saw getting me back fit as a challenge. I can’t tell you how much that means to me, I don’t think Emma does either, well she didn’t! To hear that just gave me so much confidence, knowing she will do everything she can is all I can ask for, and it doesn’t half make me feel a hell of a lot better.

Disc Wars: Surgeon Strikes Back

*WARNING - BLOG CONTAINS SLIGHTLY GRUESOME IMAGES*

So here it is, what I like to call the pesky crayfish causing havoc floating around my spinal cord! No wonder I was in a fair amount of pain…

L4/5 disc fragments removed during surgery

I was hoping to blog yesterday but I was completely out of it from the all the anesthetic, morphine and antibiotics. Then after managing to get a bit of roast beef and mash down me, in a sleepy haze and still drugged up to the max I started to feel slightly nauseas. The nurse clearly underestimated my ability to vomit so handed me the small sick bowl, he must’ve thought small girl, small amount of vomit. As the feeling rose I quickly grabbed the bigger, bed pan tray off the side, once he saw the tsunami that ensued covering all the sides, he left me to it!

The operation itself went as well as could’ve been expected. Although at one point I didn’t even think I’d get it done yesterday. The hospital policy says all patients must be tested for MRSA, something that they’d forgotten to do when they admitted me. With me lying on the trolley waiting to go into theatre I could hear mutterings in the corridor to the tune of ‘she shouldn’t even be down here’, and ‘how could you have forgotten’. Waiting for surgery is stressful enough as it is; I can assure you, this didn’t help one bit.

Once again, thankfully it turned out to be okay. A positive result would only change their post surgical procedures so they took a swab, I was given antibiotics as a precaution and once they got the result I would still be in theatre leaving them the ability to change anything if they needed to. As it turns out, they didn’t.

One of the things I’ve found hardest to deal with during past injuries has been the completely irrational thoughts that seem to unwittingly hijack my mind from time to time. This is undoubtedly no different this time and it seems the night and weekends (when doctors and physiotherapists are less readily available) are when it’s most likely to take hold. Last night when I was lying in bed my right foot and leg started to go numb. Cue irrational thoughts. Or are they irrational? This one potentially isn’t but I’ll be sure to let you know what I mean over the coming weeks. During the operation my surgeon had to move my nerve around quite a bit and it was very tight in there, a completely rational answer for what I was feeling; but I didn’t know that at the time!

The little bit gruesome scar and drains...

The VERY gruesome paper pants!

Back to the Future

Tomorrow I’m having surgery on my back. To be honest, now that I’m less than twelve hours away, I’m a little bit scared.

In contrast, since finding out the results of my MRI scan three days ago all of my thoughts have been wishing away the time, wanting it to speed up so I could get this operation over and done with and crack on with my rehab. Every day waiting I considered a wasted day, another day taken off the other side in my race to be fit for the Hockey World Cup starting in 93 days.

Unfortunately I’m no stranger to back problems, and this will be the second operation on my back. Just eleven months ago the disc that sits between L4 and L5 in the vertebrae decided to finally give up after having been prolapsed since 2006. By giving up I mean it ruptured, and the exploding fragments started causing havoc by floating around my spinal cord and pressing on the nerves going down my legs. The pain was just excruciating, a dull ache lingered constantly all the way down to my calf. A sharp pain intermittently made it impossible to get comfortable, leaving me tired, drained and often brought to tears.

After four months I successfully made it back to playing hockey, but now it seems the same thing has happened. When the doctor called me with the results I completely and utterly lost it. I was in physio and I don’t think she knew what to make of me. With tears streaming down my face all I was thinking was, that’s it, my career’s over, I’ll never play again!

As it turns out there was some confusion over which disc had ruptured. It was confirmed the next day (after a really bad nights sleep) that it was in fact the same disc as last time, I literally breathed a sigh of relief and sensed another rehab challenge on my hands.

With just one more sleep to go my thoughts move away from rehab and anything to do with hockey. It’s weird really, I guess it’s because it’s back surgery, it makes it feel a bit more serious. All I want is for it to be okay, for my surgeon to say to me when I come round that it all went to plan and I can start to rebuild once again.

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