I’ve had back problems since my mid-twenties, starting with my feet being out of alignment. When walking, there was often tightness in my shoes and stress on my calves and lower legs. No doctor could figure it out. They had never heard of it, but I had a theory of its origins.
In the mid-seventies, I was living in Los Angeles. One night right before dusk, I was driving my girlfriend Ava’s Ford Pinto. We were headed south on Highway 101 when I heard cars crashing behind me like we were in a Saturday afternoon demolition derby.
My heart began pounding, and my neck stiffened as I glanced in the rearview mirror and saw two vehicles smashed in the rear by another car. They spun out of control, crashing into the guardrail with a force of impact that sounded like a bomb going off on a battlefield. Ava screamed we would die—an unfortunate possibility; our lives ending in footnotes on the obit pages of the LA Times—with a thumbnail version of how we died early one evening in a fiery car collision on Highway 101.
Then, out came the culprit from behind. He was driving an old green Plymouth station wagon. The car was moving way too fast to keep under control. The Plymouth had tinted windows, making it impossible to see the driver. Some evil force was pursuing me in an all-out effort to erase me from the face of the earth, and there was no time to wonder why.
Before I could take one eye off the mirror, It smashed into another car, forcing it off the road where there was no guardrail, sending it sailing through thick brush, then crashing it with a heart-wrenching crunch into a heavy mound of dirt.
When I looked in the mirror again, he was right behind me. He was coming up behind me again, increasing the car’s speed. I slowed down and crossed the highway onto the breakdown lane, hoping he’d stay on the road and pass me, easing the car’s speed.
Ford Pintos had a bad reputation for the gas tank rupturing and blowing up in a rear-end collision, and whoever was driving that car seemed determined to turn me into another one of Ford’s accident statistics. That station wagon was out seeking my destruction. There was no time for reasoning as I floored the Pinto, thinking about the movie Duel, starring Dennis Weaver, chased by an evil tanker truck with no visible driver.
I returned to the highway, reaching the far left lane to insulate myself from him by packing in with the other cars. I kept changing lanes, but I couldn’t shake him. When I looked in the mirror again, there was that son-of-a bitch coming up behind me.
He nailed me in the rear while I was heading for an off-ramp looking for salvation under the bright lights of a Texaco Station. SLAM! He struck us so hard I could feel my teeth coming out of my mouth as the car turned on its roof and skidded down the highway for yards while sparks flew and Ava screamed again we would die.
When the car came to a stop, a whiff of gas crossed my nose, sending visions of our lives snuffed out in a big ball of flames. Trying my best not to panic, I fumbled, found the door handle, pushed the door open, grabbed Ava, and exited that car.
At first, I was in shock and didn’t notice, but as we headed up the off-ramp, my legs felt weak and rubbery, while my feet, which were out of alignment, swelled up in my shoes, burning up my toes from friction. I’ve never been quite the same since that accident.
For years the symptoms would come and go, and when I was in my 40s and early 50s, the problems were still there but were mild. It wasn’t until my daughter was in middle school that the troubles came back.
In the mornings, I’d drop her off and walk in a park on the ride home. At first, my body got achy, a symptom I wrote off as arthritis, a family curse. I addressed the aches and pains with over-the-counter Ibuprofen, but they escalated. Being stubborn-minded, I continued to walk through the pain and around that track for almost five years, and within that time, things went from bad to worse.
My lower back started to get tight and sore. I would have to lie on a heating pad or apply ice to get the pain to simmer down. Then I began feeling a heaviness across my shoulders and neck. It was insane pressure, like somebody was pushing down on me with hundred-pound weights. The pressure would come and go until it didn’t go away.
One day I was walking into the Post Office and, on my way out, found I couldn’t swallow without enduring intense pain. That freaked me out so bad I ran straight to the emergency room. It felt like daggers stabbing my throat. Death was imminent
After being diagnosed with a cold or the flu, the ER discharged me without prescribing preventative medication. On the way out, the doctor acted rude and distant, letting me know he had spent too much time with me and was hurrying to his next patient. He went out of his way to ignore the affected areas, never touching them to see if there was any swelling or inflammation around my throat and neck. Before he released me, he recommended over-the-counter cold medicine. None of his prescriptions addressed the pain. I couldn’t swallow normally for weeks and weeks. More symptoms came. I won’t list them all because the list is too long. I’ll suffice it by saying it kept my mind centered and on guard for the next thing God had in store for me.
Like so many others who find themselves in physical trouble, I couldn’t run to the computer fast enough to do some research on the Internet. My symptoms reflected many diseases, and at one time or another, I thought I had them all, beginning with MS, then winding down to Lou Gehrig's disease.
Every week I would come up with another disease. I drove my wife and kid up the wall. They couldn’t take it anymore. I kept running in my pajamas to the emergency ward in the middle of the night, where the ER doctors kept telling me nothing was wrong. I convinced everyone I had this or that and then convinced them of something different a day later. It was nuts.
I went from one doctor to another, and they still couldn’t find an answer. None of them could figure out what I had, not the best and brightest among them.
Things began reaching a critical point, and I felt on the edge of doom, staring down into the abyss until the day I crawled into my GP’s office, desperately looking for someone to who I could pour my heart. I sat in her office for an eternity as she told her assistant to hold all calls. Sincerity and curiosity filled her eyes, and it seemed for the first time I had found the first doctor willing to listen.
She was the only doctor smart enough to order an MRI and Cat Scan of my back. The reports returned. My lower spine had a large number of blown discs and deteriorating vertebrae. I was also diagnosed with scoliosis and spinal stenosis.
I was so happy that it was only my back, not MS, Parkinson’s, or one more horrible disease that kept me up all night thinking about death and suffering. Those who have never been through something like this would have difficulty understanding my enthralled reaction. I was going to live; all I had to do was take care of the problem, and everything would be okay. At least, that’s what I believed at the time.
Then, doctor after doctor, surgeon after surgeon. Each one with another opinion and another convoluted chartered course to save me from a one-way ticket to hell. I went to see this one surgeon, a Russian guy, wearing a silk caftan and diamond studded cufflinks. He told me his bloodline is that of the former Russian Tsars as he strutted around his office like royalty. It was good showmanship and convincing, but his procedure was dark and different, enough to give me nightmares adding months to my grieving and insomnia.
The excellent doctor showed me the procedure he believed would be the best for me. He was nuts; the most puzzling thing is that he came well-referred. He took me back to his office and picked up a plastic box with two massive mending plates. They looked like lead, like some torture contraption from the Spanish Inquisition. He stood behind his desk, holding them like gold. I couldn’t find the door fast enough. You could see me as a faint blur while I hurried out of the doctor’s office and back into the current century.
These doctors weren’t finding answers, so I researched, and I researched. After astutely gathering as much data and information as possible by scribbling data points, facts, and figures on legal pads and sticky notes, that came from my deep dive research at the library and in front of the computer, there came a time when I was ready to pick a procedure that was right for me.
All the doctors and other health professionals who came before, like my chiropractor who put me in a traction torture machine three times a week to stretch my spine, after which he would pound on my body for a half hour with meat tenderizers and other blunt instruments, said my condition would only require noninvasive surgery. After studying my situation to the best of my ability, I found a surgeon who agreed and said he could fix me. I was way ahead of him since I had been researching noninvasive surgery for months, which made me some layman’s expert in my mind’s paranoid eye.
He told me about a procedure called Coflex, which I was familiar with. Here’s the short version of what Coflex can accomplish:
What Is a Coflex Interlaminar Stabilization Procedure? The Coflex Interlaminar Stabilization procedure treats moderate to severe spinal stenosis. The Coflex device is a single-piece titanium implant in the back of your spine to support and preserve your lumbar motion.
I researched it more and found a doctor in Las Vegas who was part of the medical team that developed Coflex. I won’t mention his real name; I’ll call him Dr. Jones. We were the same age, 66 at the time. He didn’t have the God Complex, which is the curse of most surgeons.
This session lasted over 45 minutes, an unusual time for a patient to remain with a surgeon outside the operating room. We sat together like two old colleagues looking at the images of my back. While studying carefully, he talked to me, pointing out things wrong with my spine. After deliberating for nearly an hour, Dr. Jones concluded that I was the perfect candidate for the Coflex procedure.
Someone was going to lift the curse, and I would be released. My heart and spirit soared to the heavens as I signed up for surgery day with the girl at the checkout window. When I left the office and stood outside in the parking lot facing the highway, the entire world came alive, and the universe stood alongside me like a close friend. Gospel songs and musicals played in my mind as I headed home to tell everyone the good news.
Surgery day came. When I woke from it, I was in real pain. I kept pushing the button on the morphine drip to kill it. Noninvasive, my ass, this procedure was like being run over by a train.
I had to fast the day before the surgery, and by the time I woke up, it had been over 30 hours since I had eaten. Although I had no appetite from the anesthetic and the trauma, I knew I had to eat, so I began gobbling down hospital food. When my senses began returning the next day, I couldn’t eat that food anymore. I couldn’t smell it or look at it. Hospital food is terrible. in every facility I have ever been in, and I’ve spent time in many. Even Cedars Sinai, which is supposed to be one of the best hospitals, has food for pigs and scavengers. I believe the hospital food is secretly distributed throughout the country by one big evil company with horrible intentions.
I was released from the hospital and spent my time struggling on a walker from my bed to the bathroom. After a week, I set the walker aside and began walking feebly around the house. It was the summer, and my daughter was home from school, taking care of me. She and I had a good time during my recovery. Some nights we would sit up until 4 AM binge-watching the reality show Jersey Shore. It was an excellent show to watch, as it brought back memories of my times at the shore as a young adult.
Davie and I started going on short walks together, and after a few days, I started pushing further. Then the day came when I was walking normally. No pain in my back, no pressure on my shoulders.
Thank the Lord—no more pain. I could barely hold back the tears. Tears that had been damned up for years as I suffered through the ordeal. Later, when Davie was distracted in her room and my wife was out with friends, I went into my bedroom to cry. I cried, and I cried until the tears dried up and the emotions subsided.
A couple of months later, symptoms began coming back. All the signs that I described before. Things started to go downhill quickly. It was back to square one. I kept returning to the surgeon, asking him to find a cure. More X-rays, MRIs, and Cat Scans. He sent me to a neurologist and this horrible pulmonary doctor whose primary agenda was to scare me to death about all the possible ways things could fail during surgery.
I went back to Dr. Jones for a diagnosis. He fumbled for my file, which he hadn’t looked at yet. After finding them, he uploaded the images and began looking. I stood behind him with my hands on his shoulders, just like we were best buddies, asking him what do you see, John? Can you fix me? What went wrong? He continued to study the imagery with a confused look on his face. His eyes broke away from the screen. He looked at me and said he had an idea of what to do, with a lack of sincerity in his voice. I became suspicious as he launched into a plan for another surgery that seemed vague and conjured out of thin air.
AN INDELIBLE SHIELD CAME BETWEEN US when I pressed for more detail on his plan. The camaraderie, that bond of brothership between him and me, suddenly faded. Without notice, he relegated me back down to the patient who knows nothing of medicine as he transformed into the doctor who knows all. It was a hard blow, a disappointment, and a betrayal that sent me reeling.
He knew what he had done and tried to make up for his transgression by giving some simple details of what the surgery would entail. I didn’t push him for additional information because I was through with Dr. Jones.
Before leaving his office, he directed me in a booming and commanding voice that he had developed over the years to control his patients, to set up an appointment for a second surgery with the girl at the window. I passed her by without making an appointment. IT WAS RAINING when I walked to the parking lot, and I needed to remember where I left my car.
Dr. Jones, the man who brought me hope by promising he could fix me, had failed miserably in my eyes.
It was time to move on and find another surgeon because another surgery had to answer my problems, didn’t it? I was surgery happy, pining for another round of misery and pain.
It wasn’t long before I found another doctor, Dr. Kerry. He kept coming up in all my searches for the best orthopedic surgeon practicing in Las Vegas. My wife was a part of Hadassah at the time, and Hadassah, a Jewish Women’s organization, has a colossal grapevine of Yentahs who know everything there is to know about every doctor from Las Vegas to California and beyond. They came through with raving reviews and the golden seal regarding Dr. Kerry.
Dozens of reviews sounded too good to be true. There were positive testimonials all over the Internet about him. Someone wrote, (My husband was in a wheelchair for years until Dr. Kerry got him on the surgery table and fixed him. Now he’s out running marathons.) Another woman told a bedridden story, which lasted for ten years until she found Dr. Kerry, who cured her. She is now an avid hiker and mountain bike rider. This guy seemed to have done everything but raise the dead.
Dr. Kerry is a large, dark, handsome man with a kind demeanor and perfect bedside manner. His smooth talking and winning smile helped me make one of the worst decisions of my life decision. He convinced me spinal fusion was the answer. Other surgeons had warned me not to have fusion, but Dr. Kerry was adamant that spinal fusion would be my best option.
The surgery Dr. Jones performed was painful. Dr. Kerry made me feel like a train had run over me, leaving parts of my body scattered across the tracks. Postop was terrible in the hospital where he performed the surgery. They were understaffed, and it was nearly impossible to find a nurse or attendant to help me get in and out of the bathroom, so I dragged my rolling IV stand along with me while I struggled to get in and out on my own.
I told the head nurse and the attending physician that I couldn’t take Oxycodone because I had heart disease leaving me with two artificial valves. They gave that drug to me anyway. My heart started to skip beats and bounced in my chest. From experience, I knew that Zanex would stop the problem. But the nurses were reluctant to give it to me. I insisted, and they gave it to me. Within 15 minutes, my heart was back to normal. The nurses seemed impressed.
Even though the pain was off the scale of one to ten, I became pill shy and refused to take anything but Tramadol, a synthetic painkiller. Tramadol proved it wasn’t strong enough to manage the pain. The doctor on the floor came into my room, took one look at me, and said I wouldn’t get through the pain and trauma without more vital medication. He was nice enough to take the time to reason with me and talk me into taking Hydrocodone which is milder than most painkillers. My stay in the hospital was supposed to last two to three days. Because of my complications, the doctor observed me for five days. He was an excellent doctor who kept his caring eyes on me. The Hydrocodone worked, settling my nerves and diverting my mind from the pain. Sometimes you get lucky when the right person comes along. The medication fogged my mind, and I couldn’t remember the doctor's name. It bothers me that I didn’t thank him correctly.
The second operation was more complex than the first, and it took me fourteen months to regain strength. The same damn thing happened. I felt fine for a few months until the symptoms returned. I ran back to Dr. Kerry, looking for help, and he told me he could do nothing. He kept telling me to wait a year and see what would happen, putting my hopes on the chance that the bones in my spine would knit together and I would be okay. But that didn’t happen, and things got worse.
I went for a second and third opinion, and the surgeons told me they could do nothing. They said once you have fusion done, you’re stuck with it. I called my lawyer to sue. He explained the statute of limitations for suing a surgeon for malpractice was a year without exception. From then on, it wasn’t hard to combine parts of the puzzle to understand why the good Dr. Kerry kept telling me to wait a year. The man with the big smile and perfect bedside manner had hung me out to dry.
It’s been a year and a half since the last surgery. I suffer from pain and stiffness, loss of balance, and insomnia. I take painkillers and nerve blockers regularly to get through the day. I’m not looking for another surgery to cure the problem. I’ve read about people who’ve had four or five operations, sometimes more, chasing for a cure. After each surgery, your odds of success diminish. I’m seventy now, and I’m not going for another surgery until a groundbreaking procedure that will directly address my problem arises.
For those of you who have been through similar circumstances as mine, please share your story with me. I aim to build a community of those struck with a curse like myself. While we’re all suffering, it would be wise to take the time to create a knowledge base by sharing our experiences on a forum like this. Join me on my website. Go to www.wordwizard.biz.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you: your friend, Robin Basichis.
