THE OTHER SIDE OF ADVERSITY

 

Haven’t written into my blog for a long time, so I have to warn you that this is a long one.

Six months ago, I had cervical spinal surgery and my life has not been the same since (and mostly not in a good way). Before I go on, I want to share certain life perspectives that I have been raised with and have raised our daughters in a similar way.

My mother ingrained in us the popular mantra of the day, “today is the first day of the rest of your life, so do the most with it.” Lately I have added that ‘no one promised us tomorrow.’

And now a little history before bringing this up to 6 months ago. When I was 14, I had a bad fall on the first day of a family road trip vacation in the UK. I broke my collar bone and due to the nature of the fall, I also had whiplash. My father heard the break from across the street and the first thing he said was, “Oh shit. There goes the vacation.” That was far greater pain for me than the actual broken bone. Suffice it to say that the next 2 days were not so much fun for me, but the rest of the trip was fantastic and it even went down in family history as one of our best vacations.

Over the years, as a result of this injury, I also developed arthritis in the neck (and most other joints in my body) and multiple herniated discs. So I have lived with pain for most of my life and have gotten used to it, as much as someone can get used to it. Unfortunately, over the last couple of years, my pain has increased substantially, apparently due to further deterioration and more vertebrae on the way to becoming herniated as well.

The only relief from the growing pain was medical cannabis which took me 2 years to get the license for it (due to major mishandling and bureaucracy on the part of the Israel Ministry of Health). I got to the point that I was taking it every evening (it also gives me a fabulous high) and it helped reduce my pain level for about 8 hours. I only took it in the evenings when I knew I was in for the night and didn’t have other responsibilities. However, with the increasing pain, I felt that I needed to look for a better long term solution and decided on cervical spinal fusion surgery, where they take one of the damaged vertebrae, grind it up, put it in a cage and place it between the upper and lower vertebrae where it will all fuse together.  I said that if it reduced my pain level by 50%, I would be thrilled.

I scheduled my surgery for the day before my birthday and considered it to be a birthday present to myself. I had my surgery and was in the recovery room (my family couldn’t be there. Since Covid, they no longer allowed family into the recovery room). All seemed to be fine and the doctor told my wife and daughters to go have breakfast or coffee until I would in the room after the recovery room. As they were stepping out of the hospital, he called them and told them that they were rushing me back into surgery as I couldn’t feel my limbs and was having difficulty breathing. It turns out that I had a bleeder on the spine and I was between being permanently paralyzed or dying, neither a pleasant outcome. Based on the fact that I am writing this, we know that I survived.

Without going into all the details of the recovery period, I will just focus now on one thing. The doctor warned of multiple risks which were rare and none of those occurred. He also said that I wouldn’t be really able to talk and/or have a sore throat for about a week. Well, a week came and went and I was still not able to talk above a whisper. This continued for the next two months. I was not able to talk on the phone or have a conversation, even at home with the family. I had to write things on my phone for them to understand me. I had my follow up with the doctor and he understood that this should not be happening and told me to go see my ENT. My ENT told me that I need to go to a vocal cord specialist and he gave his recommendation for one of the top specialists in the country. I went to her and she put a scope in my nose and down to my throat and saw that my left vocal cord was paralyzed. Not great news. She also said that, based on experience they won’t know for a year from surgery if it is permanent or if it will become functional again. She also said many people with a paralyzed vocal cord can speak. Not the case with me and many others. So a week later, I went back to her to have a special gel injected which pushes the paralyzed vocal cord closer to the working one so that I can speak.

You know how they say that certain things happen to one in a million or other such number. Well, I continue to be that one, both with the emergency surgery and now with my vocal cords. I wish it would work with the lottery tickets I buy. For whatever reason (and the doctor still doesn’t know why), the gel didn’t hold and I didn’t regain my voice. So a couple of weeks later, I went through the procedure again. And believe me, it is far from pleasant, actually quite painful despite the multiple anesthetics that are used (in the nose, in the mouth and injected into the neck, which is where she also injects the gel). This time, she injected a larger amount of gel. After the procedure, you’re not allowed to talk for 2 days so that they gel will hold in place. I was a good boy and didn’t talk at all (both times). This time, the gel did do its job but only a little. I had some voice but far from a normal one. This gel is supposed to last about 3 months. Again, I’m the statistic. It held for about 1.5 months and I again started to lose the little voice I had. It never reached the low of post-surgery where I could only whisper (at least that, huh?).

After the second procedure, I began going to a speech therapist who is wonderful. She tried to help me speak and breath differently so that I could have some level of voice and not be short of breath every time I spoke. It helped a little but that’s on me. In this case, I was not such a good boy and didn’t do as much of the exercises as I needed to do. But even so, she recognized that my situation was not so good. I got to her through the vocal cord specialist as they work together as well. This was truly beneficial to me as she spoke to her and got me a very quick appointment for a follow up. Because the gel didn’t hold as long as it should and all the other complications, she sent me to do an EMG test which measures muscle response to electrical activity. This test is done by a vocal cord specialist together with a neurologist. Unfortunately, she couldn’t get the neurologist to perform the test on me so I had to go to another hospital. It took me over a week to reach the proper department to do the test, again thanks to my speech therapist. The purpose of the test is to see if the vocal cord nerve is permanently paralyzed (which I said they normally just wait for a year after the initial damage, but my case is one of the rare ones – lucky me – ha ha) or if the nerve will come back to functionality. My wife came with me and she was very hopeful that the nerve would come back. Well, the results came in immediately and the nerve is permanently paralyzed. I kind of thought that this would be the result so I took it in stride. My wife was devastated because it meant another surgery.

This surgery is to put a silicon implant which permanently pushed my paralyzed vocal cord next to the perfectly functioning vocal cord which is supposed to give me back my voice (hopefully) and ease all of the other associated problems (shortness of breath, constant, uncontrollable coughing due to irritating the vocal cords when speaking). Breaking the news to my daughters was quite difficult as they still live the trauma of almost losing me from the spinal surgery. My younger daughter still has nightmares of it. They all understand my real need for the surgery. My speaking difficulties has really cut me off from so many things, even when I use a voice amplifier. I do not partake as much in conversations, it is very hard to be heard and understood in telephone conversations and when I try to raise my voice, it is sometimes interpreted as my being angry (which I’m not; I’m just trying to be heard). Some days are better and my voice is stronger but as I speak more, the strength of my voice deteriorates and also causing throat pain. I can’t speak long sentences as I need to stop to take a breath very frequently so my conversations are stilted.

So my surgery is scheduled for April 10 and I’m very much looking forward to be past this saga. I am cautiously optimistic, although I don’t expect to have exactly the same voice I had before and I also understand that I may need more speech therapy post-surgery.

As with most things in life, it’s all about attitude. We have control over so little in our lives and our happiness and futures are totally dependent on how we deal with what broadsides us in life. It’s all about attitude – do we let these things put us down or do we decide to look straight at them and decide how we are going to get to the other side? I try my best to make it to the other side.

Below are quotes that I have as part of my email signature and they help to guide me to the other side of adversity.

 

​Each morning when I open my eyes I say to myself:

I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today.

I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead,

Tomorrow hasn't arrived yet. I have just one day, today,

and I'm going to be happy in it.

--Groucho Marx

 

​"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass,
It's about learning to dance in the rain!" Author Unknown

 

​“If the wind will not serve, take to the oars. “-Latin proverb