So this is what they are going to stick into my back. As far as I can tell its a piece of PVC pipe with a big gnarly stainless screw in it. There will actually be 2 more screws too. One going up and two going down. Just like toe-nailing a rib on a ramp or something. This little do-hickey will take the place of the disc they are taking out and lock the to adjacent vertabrae in place. 6 more days till surgery day so not much going on with me. Finally got the mountain bike that Giant sent me rolling so I can ride that for a bit since its nice and squishy with full suspension. However, after surgery the docs tell me I’m not supposed to lift anything over 10 pounds for three whole months!!! I’m sure there is a great joke here I’m missing. I was thinking, maybe if I use all the lightest parts with lots of holes drilled in them I could maybe get a bike together that is light enough for me to ride without breaking doctors orders??

I guess in whatever is going with Ride’s blog reformating I lost a few of the most recent posts, so here they are again. I’m so sick of writing about this fusion surgery stuff, but I figure maybe someone somewhere will go through the same thing someday and perhaps find some of this a helpful reference.

From June 18 2009

Jamie Bestwick was kind enough to set me up to talk to his doctor about spine surgeries. Dr Gregory Bailey did the fusion surgery that Jamie had done a little while ago and had him riding again in 5 weeks. Dr Bailey confirmed that based on my symptoms and MRI surgery did seem to be the right path. He also made me feel pretty confident about my surgeons. Definitely nice to get a good second opinion. He also restated that a six month recovery time is to be expected with the type of surgery I’ll get. Dr Bailey is cool, if you need back help in PA I would highly recommend going to see him.

I’m sick of talking about backs and ready to get this done. And sick of being a zombie on pain meds.

From June 15 2009

Not really too much to report about the back right now except that I met with the Cardio-Vascular surgeon and got a date for surgery. July 9th they slice me up. He described in detail how they will make an incision from my belly button straight down about 4 inches. Then he pushes all the intestines and stuff out of the way making a hole visible all the way to my spine. The really dangerous part is that he then must move my aorta blood vessel out of the way by gently flexing it to one side. While he was telling me it really started to make me a little bit queazy. Usually that stuff doesn’t bother me, but for some reason it felt like I could feel what he was doing inside of me. It reminded me of the time I was telling my friend Jared the details of my splenectomy. I was explaining how they chop you open and then empty all of your intestines out of your body into a bowl so they can wash the blood off them and stop the bleeding of the exploded spleen. He suddenly went green and puked! It was only later that he told me it was because everything was especially realistic to him since he had been drinking magic mushroom beer.

I’m running out of dogs for the back related post thumbnails. Here’s Digger and Bobby from Ray’s.
Just back from the doctors and just went over my MRI results. Heavy news for me. Looks like we are going to do the fusion surgery of L5-S1. Surgery won’t take place for almost a month, but when it does Its only like a 2 day stay in the hospital, but it means that after surgery no activity for 3 months and no riding for real for 6 months! Yikes. I didn’t really expect it to take that long to heal.

That disc is not supposed to be doing that. It should be like the ones above and staying flush with the spine.
I have a pretty substantial rupture in my the disc between L5-S1. The treatments range for this kind of thing, but after a good talk my doctor and I have settled on the fusion surgery. The options though are as follows:

-Cortizone epidural shots like Tom Stober had to bring down the swelling but not actually fixing the disc. This can make you feel better because it relieves pressure, but it can last as little as a few days, or in some cases less serious then mine it can relieve the entire problem.

-There’s also a procedure to clip the part of the disc that is distended. Sounds like this is what Ben Ward was saying that Rich Hirsch had. My doctor said that usually when the disc between L5-S1 is herniated and putting pressure on the nerves it causes leg pain and shooting feelings radiating downwards. If that is the case then clipping the protuding disc usually solves the problem. I don’t have that at all, I only have pain in my lower back. My legs feel a bit week, but mainly its my back muscles that are unable to function. Doc says that clipping the disc very possibly may not relieve this problem since it may have more to do with the joints pressure on the nerves. Its interesting to see what functions of the body are “typically” impacted by disc damage at different levels. Each level has its own characteristics.

-We could possible do an artificial disc replacement. Unfortunately, this extremely expensive procedure is considered “experimental” by my insurance company and so I’m not covered for it. The up side is that at this level in the spine there’s not really that much movement, or at least, higher up would be much more crucial. A fusion at this level should not really be too much of an issue for flexibility for me. However, if in 6 months from now you see me just starting to ride again and I’m all stiff we can just blame that.

-So, we settled on the fusion surgery. Its what Ruben was describing last post. The crazy part is they go in through the front of your abdomen to do the surgery. Its a relatively small incision, but two surgeons are present. One to do the actual screw and plate and bone graft surgery, and one to monitor and control the extremely vital arteries that run right in front of the spine. Basically they screw and plate the vertebrae together so they can’t move, and then fill the area where the disc used to be with bone grafts that will fill it in so the damaged disc can no longer put pressure on the spine. I think…. I’ll get more and more precise with exactly what is going on as I learn more.

To be honest I was so rocked by the idea that I wouldn’t be able to ride for 6 MONTHS that I kind of stopped being able to think straight. Heavy news for me today.

Next step is to meet with the Vascular Surgeon to go over his procedures in the surgery and check to see if my splenectomy scars are going to be an issue for this surgery. After meeting with him I’ll be able to schedule a surgery date. The earliest possible time being between 3 and 4 weeks from now.

I’m pretty freaked out by all this, and dreading being laid up for so long, but at the same time I’m really itching to get this taken care of. Guess I’m staying in Austin for a while to deal with all of this.

So today I finally got my MRI scan. Had to wait a few extra days for my insurance company to authorize the procedure and it still cost me $600. Every time I get an MRI I’m convinced a Vulcan must have designed the machine. What a completely inhumane and uncomfortable experience. If you’ve ever had one done in an old-school closed machine you know what I mean. You have to lay perfectly still for 25 minutes in something that feels like a coffin buried underground. I’m not very claustrophobic, but with my arms pinned down by the narrow girth of the machine and my face 3 inches from the top of the tube I found it very difficult to breath. And, the noises! Holy cow, only some logic-first brained engineer could make a machine that sounds like that. So loud and so crazy, popping and ratcheting and whining and humming. And no rhythm. I think that’s the future, an MRI machine with rhythm would be so much easier to take. Just keep a beat and we’d all be able to relax so much more. After every MRI I always feel like my skin is burning, but the techs just laugh at me and tell me its all in my head ’cause you can’t feel the magnet going through you. Bollocks I say to you, bastard Vulcans!

Might not be green blooded, but he sure ain’t human. Ruben Alcantara is one of my heros.

Speaking of Vulcans, since I’ve been down and chilling I’ve been watching lots of movies. Saw the new Terminator movie which really confused me as it seemed to have no story of any kind, went and saw Up in 3D which was super fun and amazing. (Do you know that’s what I wanted to go to school to learn to do? However, back in ‘91 when I was in college there wasn’t even one computer in the entire art program at the University I went to and art professors were still saying that anything made on a computer could not be considered art, I dropped out to ride anyway.) I watched the new Star Trek movie too and had a great time. Lately I’ve been watching all the old ‘Trek movies over again and they seem so much better after having seen the new one. I think they did a really good job of keeping the spirit and story line of the old ones going… good fun when you’re spending most of your days laying down.

Another hero, James Sheperd. SPRFLS posted a rad Sheep Bites article he wrote a long time ago. I miss you writing Sheps! Check it —->here.

Anyway, back to backs. Ruben Alcantara wrote me and I think I am inspiring him to deal with his ongoing back issues. He said he went and saw a really good doctor in  Spain who is going to help him. His back problem is the L5 to S1 disc which is more or less what my problem is too (although I also have a damaged disc between L4-L5 too). The L5 is your lowest Lumbar vertebrae and the S1 is kind of like inside your pelvis. I’m sure thats not the right way to put it, but dam it Jim, I’m not a doctor! Sorry… too much Star Trek. And, hell, I just spent a while searching for a good picture, but they all seem pretty copyrighted. Just do a search for spinal regions if you care.

Ruben is going to try a drug cocktail for a couple weeks that Google can’t seem to translate for me. Lyrica, Dacortin, Artrinovo, and Omeprazol is what he’s going to be on, swallowing or injected with… I don’t know which. I assume that is some sweet new medicine that we don’t use in the US because that’s the way it usually goes, but if anyone can translate that into English I’d be interested. Its probably roughly translated into: Coffee, Chilling at the beach, Eating good food and a Glass of Wine. He says there is a chance that the medicine can help relieve the nerve trauma and he might not need surgery. If not that he says ‘then surgery fuising that disc with screws, plates and full up with pieces of your bones.’

Ruben, you can not have my bones just yet.

Crossing my fingers my MRI results are in tomorrow so I can get them analyzed by my doctor, if not, he’s taking a 2 week vacation the next day.

Ok, on to Star Trek 4 for me….

Saw this happen a few weeks ago while I was still in Cleveland. Am I still moving there? I don’t know anything right now… all up in the air till I deal with my back.

No reason for this dog other then I’ve decided that all of my posts dealing with back issues should have a dog for a thumbnail.

Just got back from the first visit with my new doctor. All went well. He is a spinal surgeon, but he didn’t seem to think that surgery was the guaranteed way to go. I kind of baited him with the “I think its time to get surgery” routine and he said there maybe some other alternatives and not to resign myself to that. That was good and he seems pretty easy to talk to so far. Of course, the usual drill ensued… “Go get an MRI and come back”. After calling 15 disconnected numbers given to me by my wonky health insurance I finally found a working one and made an appointment for monday. Hopefully by later next week I will be able to have the prints read and have an idea of what can be done for me and when.

That’s the problem area, but the xray is very faint and hard to see. Disc squished between L4 and L5 and probably worse between L5 and whatever is below that.

Going a little stir crazy so I talked Giant into sending me a MTB to ride. I’m hoping some suspension will help me at least be able to put in some cross country miles and get some desperately needed exercise. Although, I’m pretty afraid of trying to put it together. Hydraulic brakes and gears and crap… I have no idea. Really makes you appreciate how amazingly simple BMX bikes are. I think that should be the rule for all you BMX designers. Keep it simple. If its not simple its not BMX.

I asked the Indian doctor who made this xray what the dark spot was and he got really embarassed and red and said, “this is your poo poo”.

Yesterday I had the bright idea to do some concrete work at a new ditch I found. How could anyone have guessed that lugging 80lb bags of concrete around would make my injured back sore? I really don’t know what I’m doing with concrete and have never used it before. I smoothed out one kink a little bit though, but it looks like its going to wash away in the first rain. I did find a really cool ditch right down the street from my house. 15 years in Austin and I’ve never heard of it before. Lots of potential with just a little work (assuming I can figure out how to do the work).

I don’t understand how the little sharp metal bits from my spleen surgery can be ok to leave inside me. Seems like they would poke through something to me?

I don’t have any good drawings or photos to go with this post, so how about a true story from yesterday typed out in green italics…

Had a nice relaxing memorial weekend and hope all you did too, or at least I hope you rode bikes a bunch and it was awesome. I watched a lot of TV and drank beer. Not sure if this is an appropriate back therapy, but it was peaceful enough.

We were on the edge of the woods and Roscoe and Monty were chilling. As usual Monty was sniffing around to see what he could find…

I’ve been getting lots of letters with ideas for my back so thats been good. Tom Stober wrote me back and it sounds like he is in a similar situation to me. On going issues with his back and contemplating getting the fusion surgery. Basically they “fuse” a couple of your vertebrae together to resolve the issue of the crushed disc in between them. The disc is what flexs around and allows your back to bend. On the x-rays it looks just like the little donut part in a skateboard truck and honestly kind of works the same way. However, when you explode it they don’t really heal on their own, and put pressure on your spinal cord. Or, like in my case, allow your vertebrae to touch each other. That pressure can cause incredible pain or make a leg or part of your body not work right. In my case the pain is not super intense (though it sucks) but I loose all the strength in my lower back. Tom’s had a number of epidural shots to help ease the pain and help speed up the healing of the inflammation. This is usually done with cortizone/ corticosteriod shots. These aren’t the kind of steroids that make you big and strong (Tom just works out a lot), but they can help in healing and reducing inflammation (i’ve had it in pills a few times during my annual poison ivy allergic reaction). They always make me really grumpy and stressed. There’s some serious consideration for long term side affects as well, so you don’t want to go this route too many times. And jeeze, needles in the spine sounds gnarly!

Suddenly from the edge of the trees a tiny little baby deer sprinted out and with knobby knees and all leapt right over little Monty.

Ben Ward from Odyssey gave me a call to let me know that Rich Hirsch actually didn’t have the fusion surgery (as I reported last post) but had a different thing. Ben thought it was something where they removed a part of the disc that was pressing the spinal cord. I imagine that means they removed the little blown out part that would be creating pressure? I don’t know. Also got a number of doctor recommendations from different people for all over North America, so thanks everyone for the help!

All this happened unbeknownst to Roscoe who had his own business to attend to. The baby deer saw his opportunity and aimed his attack.

I figure when it comes to wisdom in BMX there’s few who could offer better advice then Brian Foster so I’ll include his text to me in full. He wrote: “I say all bodily pain can be cured by stretching your hamstrings. Figured the opinion of one more “specialist” couldn’t hurt. Good luck.” I agree that is good advice for all BMXers and we should all take it to heart. Because we are always pushing down with our legs our quads tend to get overly strong, but the opposing muscle doesn’t get anywhere near as developed. The result can be a tendency for your lower back to arch a little bit more than its supposed to and pelvis to tilt down. That’s true in my case and doing situps and stretching hamstrings is the best way I can come up with to relieve the stress on my spine (and relieve some of the pressure by better aligning my spine).

Blammm! The baby deer charged with all his speed and might right into the side of poor old Roscoe’s head.

I have an appointment with a back specialist/ orthopedic spinal surgeon on friday. Going to go over all my mri’s and x-rays to figure out what he thinks we can do. I hope he seems cool and can convince me he knows what’s best to do. Thanks again everyone for all the help.

Poor Roscoe was left dazed and confused (but unhurt since the deer was hardly the size of a cat). As he watched his attacker skamper off into the woods he wondered why baby deers were such little bastards.

I haven’t really accomplished as much as I’d like with this all today. I first contacted the agent who sold me my health insurance because he promised some tips with how to deal with the insurance company if I ever needed a potentially expensive procedure. Unfortunately the agent who I worked with is gone and the new guy just said call you insurance company. Calling the insurance company is always an exercise in patience. After getting bounced around to 4 different people I finally got to someone who could tell me which specialist were in my insurance’s coverage network and would be able to help me. I got the number of 4 “back” specialists and did some internet searching to read reviews on their practice. Good thing I did because not one of them specialized in spines or back problems in anyway. One was a knee doctor, one hands, one on little children with club feet (who had a gnarly review where some mother wanted him dead for taking her children away and giving them to protective services for abuse…. heavy stuff to read for sure!).

Back to the insurance company and they say they can’t help find a doctor because they are not doctors. Dead end.

So I called my doctor who already recommended surgery to see if he could send me to some sort of all around back specialist. The nurse took the message and said he’d call right back. Amazingly the phone did ring right away, but it was only his office calling to tell me he’s gone till tuesday sometime.

I don’t have a scanner while traveling, but this really just looks bad because it is.

Photographer Jared Souny emailed to say I should try talking to Woodward vert ripper Tom Stober.

[youtube]inE_WgACTHI[/youtube]

I guess Tom has been wrestling for years with similar issues so we’ll see what advice he can offer. Jared also said that Rich Hirsch had a back fusion done last year and was back riding quickly. Jamie Bestwick also had that surgery and once told me it helped him immensely.

Someone else told me that I should just start smoking weed.

Ok, back to doctor hunting online…

For a while I lived in Cleveland in a warehouse with a rooster. What a bastard he was in the morning. So loud!

Well a few people have been asking me why I haven’t been writing lately. I wasn’t sure myself for a while, but now I think its because I haven’t been able to ride a whole lot lately. For some reason it doesn’t seem like very much fun to blog on a BMX site if I’m not riding BMX. I haven’t been riding a whole lot because of my chronic back problems. Its been a real trouble for me for the last 4 or 5 years. For a while it went away and maybe I solved the original problem, or maybe it was just hidden. It did seem like I overcame things for a year or two, but anyway it came to a peak for me yesterday and is bothering more then ever. It got so bad that I asked Odyssey to stop paying me since I don’t feel like I can ride or produce anything for them. Team manager Jim Bauer denied me though and told me they would stick it out and still wanted to support me.

I represented Odyssey to the best of my ability in Cleveland’s bike polo games. I’m pretty awful at it, but it was really a very big lot of fun!

Maybe back in february when I did that Odd Couple video contest at Ray’s is the last time I felt really good on my bike. After that contest I was pretty beat up and that seemed fair since I had ridden really hard and crashed a lot. I don’t have a problem being sore after I’ve been pushing myself. But, as usual lately, my lower back kept giving me problems. It feels like the muscles just won’t fire and in order to ride I catch myself getting into weird positions to compensate. It mostly always hurts or flat out gives up on me when I’m pulling up. I can ride more or less like normal, pumping on ramps isn’t too much of a problem anyway, but I can’t really bunny hop or go very high. I’ve noticed that since this back thing popped up I tend to go as low as I can on box jumps or jumps. If I pull too hard my back will scream at me and I will be out for a week or two. I tend to kind of save those few going high pulls I get a month for special occasions. Seems silly to me since going high has always been about the only thing that ever really mattered to me on a bike.

Nina got some free tickets to an Indian’s game. It was pretty fun to watch baseball in the stadium, despite how boring it looks on TV.

I’ve been in Cleveland for the last month and I got a gym membership to work on rehabing my back. 5 or 6 days a week in the gym working really hard and doing every exercise I’ve learned for core strength and I felt stronger and in better shape then I have in years. I got back to Austin for a couple week visit and after 10 minutes of riding in a ditch down the street my back was screwed. Odyssey really needed a photo of me for an ad so a couple days later I took a handful of advil, got Sandy Carson to bring a camera and tried to get a photo done. Everytime I hit the lip of a nice hip I found I got a bright white shot of pain radiatiing from my lower back and curse word would shoot out of my mouth. It would momentairly erase my focus and I would have to figure out in the few milliseconds of airtime that I had what I was doing and try to continue on trying to get a trick done well enough for Sandy to get a photo. 20 minutes or so of shooting and I had some decent table top shots and nothing else. I had to stop because the last 10 or so hits had been so painful I could barely even find how to land, let alone do anything worth photographing.

I spent half the game watching this dude eat a world record amount of peanuts.

Well anyway, I clearly need to do something about it. At the moment I can barely tie my shoes or bend at all. Its been on and off again for years now, and I think I can admit that no amount of rehabbing is going to entirely fix this. I’ve spent time with chiropractors, bought the stupid thing you hang upside down by your feet with, stretched, heated and iced all I can. I have had MRI’s done of course and I more or less crushed a couple discs in my lower back. The really confusing part is that one doctor told me that I would never be able to ride unless I got a spine fusing surgery, another doctor told me I would be fine just through conditioning, and another doctor told me never to get the surgery and it would be the worst thing I could ever do. All the same inconsistencies pop up when I ask people who’ve had back problems what they did. It leaves me feeling really unsure of what to do. Today I pulled up back specialists online and saw that it seems like most of them have their specialized fields as well. Like the doctors are usually a spinal surgeon, or a decompression specialist or rehab specialist. I feel like I would pretty much be self diagnosing myself if I pick one of these specialists. As in, I can bet what course of action the Spinal Surgeon will take with my back you know?

Lil’ Monty had a good time watching the bike polo. Laughing his little head off it seems to me.

Well, anyway, tomorrow I am going to start my search for a solution in earnest. I was thinking since I’ve been in a writing drought I would document it here on the blog is well. Maybe it’ll be funny or interesting in some way, or at least informative possibly? We’ll see and hopefully I can figure this out. Ok, first thing I need to do is call my insurance co and figure out what I’m covered for and how. Then find some doctors with some good reviews and then get going on trying to repair myself.

I’m starting to get confused here, BMX companies making road bikes, Sunday’s new cruiser is fun to ride, side hacks are coming back, I played bike polo on a fixed gear yesterday, and this trials rider is amazing!

[youtube]Z19zFlPah-o[/youtube]

Bikes are good!

So I was reading Sandy Carson dot com when I read about how my band’s new record is for sale. I hadn’t actually heard that it was officially for sale yet, so it was news to me. Sandy shot the photos and did all the layout and design of the record itself so I guess he had the inside information. We are all really happy with how it came out. Its on orange vinyl and is a split record with 1 side belonging to the Snake Trap and 1 belonging to Transmography. If you don’t have record player (get one) it also comes with a CD of the tracks plus bonus tracks from each band. The Trap’s bonus tracks are a few unreleased songs and 1 live one. You can order them from Australian Cattle God Records.

Should I feel weird about schelping stuff on my blog? Ha…. I think you should also buy Odyssey parts, Giant Bikes, Bicycle Union Gloves, and Fender Guitars. Oh hell, you can buy my house too!

A while ago I lived in Olympia Washington. All over town we’re the same lame signs that said No Skating, No Bicycling, No Rollerblading. In other words, no kids and no fun. I made some stickers that looked pretty much exactly the same that looked like this…

I tried to stick them over as many of the original signs as I could. It was my very subtle act of social disobedience. I hoped at least one person would get the joke, irony, whatever and think about it… Hopefully and possible leading to a positive outcome. It reminded of the little 13 year olds kids at the skatepark who would tell me to get out of the skatepark ’cause bikes weren’t allowed WHILE smoking a joint. I would tell them they would make great cops. I found that would kind of rock them. The street thug attitude of little grommet skaters sure don’t want to be thought of as acting like cops. That might be another sticker… something about skateparks being the training ground for future cops? “Do you sit around on your ass at the skatepark and enjoy hassling people who are having fun? When you grow up you should try sitting around in our squad cars and doing the same thing!” The whole Brian Bylther riding parks in his police officer’s uniform really throws all this out the window doesn’t it? Nobody likes getting told what to do do they?

Well, anyway, don’t tell any skaters or cops about this…

I went camping last night and aside from costing $26 to camp in a tent at a campground with no toilets, showers or even running water in 20 degree weather there were about a millions signs. There was literally signs saying “No Dogs On Beach” every 30 feet for 2 miles along the deserted icy cold beach front. As if that wasn’t enough, there was 2 of my least favorite signs in the world in the back of a dirt parking lot! No bicycling in a state park parking lot? You can’t even rollerblade and skate in the dirt! Come on… I went camping to get away from everything and look at the stars and the animals, I don’t want to see 50,000 signs everywhere.

But jeeze… I sounds way too negative here. The park was beautiful and it was amazing to be the only person out there for miles and miles. Saw bald eagles and deer and everything was so peaceful. Good times!

Needless to say I gave one of these most detested signs a little irritated shove. To my surprise it broke off, flew through the air and landed in a fire. I took a picture of it here.

Well, I’ll probably get some sort of felony for posting this, but at least in 30 feet of dirt parking lot in the back of a some state park in the middle of nowhere you can now legally rollerblade if you want to; till the next sign gets put up.