Spear to The Back

It started three years ago when I came back from a trip to the Russian wilderness. I thought nothing of the trip at first. It was nice and all, camping in the Taiga. One day after work, my back just cracked underneath the pressure of my weight. An electrifying-popping sort of pain surged through my lower back, forcing me to scream and gnash my teeth for the rest of that night. I thought I might’ve overworked myself or positioned my body somehow awkwardly, warranting a strained muscle. It hurt a lot. Although it felt like an overexertion injury more than anything, sort of like when your traps hurt due to stress.

The next morning the pain was gone, and I forgot about the painful incident. As the week rolled by and the workload piled on, the discomfort in my lumbar region started rearing its ugly head all over again. It was this searing kind of pain as if someone poked between my L1 and S1 vertebrae with a hot nail. It was mildly irritating at this point, so I mostly ignored it, mostly. I reasoned it was a strain, strained muscles can be a nagging injury if they’re left unattended for years. I thought taking a good rest for a few days was bound to fix me up. Sure enough, by the following week, my back pain was only present in my memory.

Some time had passed, and I completely forgot about my painful lumbar problem, that is until I fought with one of my co-workers. It was only a bout of verbal jousting, but I was so heated one could probably see steam coming out of me, not an hour after that argument – a lightning bolt vent off just above my tailbone. My vertebrae locked in place. A fire was lit up just below my belt line, and I stood there, frozen in place with a perplexed expression on my face. The pain traveled in pulsating waves of burning waves of nervous stimulation from my pelvis to my stomach. I felt as if something was twisting and turning in my pelvic cavity while the reoccurring beats of agonizing electricity coursing through my central nervous system made me nauseous.

I got off work early that day, barely made it to my car. In fact, I couldn’t really stand, stared and visibly limped on my right leg. I was in so much pain I couldn’t sleep right for the next couple of days. The pain kept coming and going in reoccurring waves of torment. I thought I only needed rest at the time because I wasn’t experiencing any neuropathy. The pain didn’t travel down my legs. So, I assumed there wasn’t anything seriously wrong with me. I’ve to say, the sensation is comparable to inflammatory pain and there was a tender and sensitive spot on my back. One spot where if I’d touch it, a nauseating lightning bolt would run through my entire body.

The pain came and went. It didn’t get any worse, so I kept on ignoring it, living with it. Just tried to not overexert myself so as to avoid it.

A year and a half ago, I realized that I couldn’t even sit for prolonged periods of time. Whenever I did, my right buttock and leg would start feeling as if I had sat on top of paper sand. At first, I just thought it was some unrelated issue and ignored that too. My back was hurting less and less. However, my bowels were also becoming somewhat less regular. Also, I had a more frequent urge to urinate, especially after experiencing even the slightest amount of stress.

One day I straight up felt as if something with sharp claws was walking up and down my right leg when there was nothing. Sitting down that day felt as if I had sat on a razor-sharp blade. I couldn’t sit, I couldn’t lay on my right side. I couldn’t even walk straight or stand upright for long periods of time. I started realizing something was terribly wrong when my calf spasmed out of the blue and I couldn’t relax the muscle for a couple of hours. The spasming ended, but the muscle was still tense and contracted, making it extremely difficult to stay on my feet.

By the end of that week, I ended up in the hospital. Waking up on a Friday morning I moved to get out of bed but a flaming spear was jammed into between my L5-S1 spinal section. A lightning bolt ran straight through me. I bit into my tongue from the pain and soon enough I realized I was stuck.

I couldn’t move, the slightest movement sent electric aftershocks that forced me to dig my fingers deeper into my pillow. Soon enough, my leg got caught up in the storm too. The feeling of a saw slicing through the back of my leg coupled with the feeling of clawed legs running up and down the limb bombarded my mind. My stomach started twisting and turning too, I was getting nauseated from the pain again. The room started spinning and my heartbeat was through the roof.

I was afraid for my life. Nobody had told me that even the slightest of spinal injuries can quite literally paralyze you. My mind started racing, and I was sure I was about to die, stuck in my bed. My ever-increasing heart palpitations and dizziness didn’t help the feeling of impending doom. The more the pain tired me out, the more fearful and panicked I became, and thus the worse the pain got.

By the time I managed to get to my phone, my whole body felt as if I had been beaten up by a murderous gang of robotic mannequins. I called 911 and told them of my situation – the ambulance was quickly on its way. While waiting, petrified from the waist below, I thought I was going to surely die. Probably in the hands of an angel in a medic’s uniform. The fact that my rib cage felt as if it was about to explode as a result of my accelerated heart beat didn’t help. When the medics arrived, my head felt heavy from the stress and I could barely speak due to all the pain.

Needless to say, I made it safely to the hospital. I was fortunate enough or rather unfortunate enough to be temporarily paralyzed from the waist down, that landed me a spot in emergency care. I was administered some strong painkillers, but those didn’t help too much. I still felt as if I was being impaled through the back, but the feeling in my legs was slowly returning. The feeling of your legs turning wooden is definitely a scary one.

They did a bunch of screening and imaging of my back. Turns out there was a tumor on my spine. Emergency surgery as a result of my condition ensued.

A few hours later the doctors had never seen anything like that before, I was told it caught them by surprise. The doctors and me, both. What I had wasn’t a spinal tumor. Apparently, after opening up deep enough, they had found some sort of spider nested over an egg sack on top of my intervertebral disc. It was causing a compression of the spinal canal and sciatic nerve. A dim sense of dread washed over me, followed by a slight heartburn as when I informed of the source of my agonizing troubles. In my mind, I was screaming profanities but externally I remained calm. Good thing I was under the influence of painkillers.

If I’m being completely honest, I think the surgeons missed an egg or something. I was fine for over a year, however. My back has flared up again, and I felt sick when something akin to sharp claws started moving down the back of my thigh.