Walking on Sunshine (Hopefully)

A week from today, I’m scheduled for spinal surgery—my second one in eight years. My back is a hot mess. An old SI joint injury combined with extensive degenerative disc disease, osteoarthritis, spinal stenosis, and what my PCP describes as “significant abnormalities” leave me hobbled in the mornings and sweating from excruciating pain after standing for more than ten minutes. What can I say? I am my mother’s daughter. I have a semblance of her smile, her sense of humor, and her spine. I wish I’d inherited her fortitude as well.

My surgery, however, is not yet approved by insurance. Today, the peer-to-peer review takes place because five years of physical therapy and steroid injections and muscle relaxant prescriptions and x-rays and MRIs and literal begging and an ocean of tears are not enough for the insurance company to give my amazing, renowned surgeon the thumbs up.

Apparently, they’re worried about my BMI.

Dude, so am I.

(And please don’t get me started on why an insurance company’s “medical” opinion matters more than my actual orthopedic surgeon’s recommendation. Healthcare in this country. Oy.)

I’ve gained 75 pounds in the last eight years. Many of those pounds, of course, I can attribute to less than stellar food choices—which I’ve significantly corrected in the past six months—but most, I have to blame on inactivity. It’s a horrible cycle to be stuck in: back pain —> inactivity —> weight gain —> more back pain —> more inactivity due to back pain —> more weight gain. I’ve been Sporty Spice all my life, but recently, my back has just said HELL, NO. So, I’ve become sloth-like. Vegetable-ish. Doing more sitting than standing, more lounging and languishing than walking, riding, and running. I’m soft and sad.

It’s a life of unwanted leisure that does not fit me very well.

Willing to do whatever it takes to rid myself of this life-altering pain, I asked my surgeon if losing weight would help. He shook his head and said, “Your problem isn’t caused or exacerbated by weight; it’s structural.”

Sigh.

Do I hope this surgery might be a panacea? Absolutely. Do I think it will be? Not realistically. But it could lead to the beginning of a new era of exercise that helps me reclaim some of my former life.

I’d be happy to just walk again. There’s a lot to see in this great, big world, and I would be content to walk my way through it. Slowly, but surely. I don’t need to do anything competitive, anything crazy. I just want to walk.

At that moment in time a decade or so ago when I realized I’d played my last softball game, I remember feeling a great sense of loss and sadness. But what I wouldn’t give to return to that day when I could still jog (albeit slowly), when I could still play recreational tennis and shoot some hoops, when I could still explore the world with strong legs, when I could still dance through a concert and a few encores. I’d happily sacrifice softball for that kind of life again.

Who said, “You don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone?” Because they certainly nailed it.

Some medical experts say the risk of surgery at my BMI outweighs the benefits. But I’ve had this BMI for a while now, and I’ve undergone a full knee replacement and a complete hysterectomy with it. My body itself is pretty resilient. My back? Not so much.

I understand that a healthier BMI creates an atmosphere for a more successful surgery, but I’m not sure I’ll ever have a BMI under 30 again. So, without surgery, my only other option is to live with this shitty back while I try desperately to lose the weight that my post-50 body is clinging to like a life raft. And that thought just wears me down.

I mean, I don’t want to have blood clots, obviously. And I don’t want my heart to have to go into overdrive to sustain me. My heart has a lot of love and life left in it. I’m only 56, after all. I’m willing to get up and start a walking regimen the same day as my surgery. I’m happy to grit my teeth and embrace that temporary but intense surgical pain if it means preventing blood clots in an effort to abate the ongoing, soul-crushing, sweat-inducing, mind-altering pain I deal with on a daily basic.

Fingers crossed that the peer-to-peer goes well today and that my surgery next week is approved and ultimately successful. I’ll be back in action on Monday regardless because, well, I’m a contractor and I don’t get paid if I don’t work. So, I’ll be coming to you live from my bed with some good narcotics to fog my brain and my post-surgery pain and some hope in my heart for a slow but steady walk around my new block.