467: 14 Surgeries Later... My Back (and Boobs) Story

I'm actually 3/4 of an inch taller post surgery because they had to un. Collapse my spine, put a disc in there. He literally added three quarters of an inch to my height, which is cool. That's wild. Welcome to Midlife Conversations. I'm your host, Natalie Jill, and I'm passionate about having amazing conversations that matter to us midlife women. On this podcast, I do what I do best. Taking complicated health topics and breaking them down simply so that we can optimize aging together. I share actionable steps to help you thrive in what I believe are our best best years to come. Join me as I interview the most inspiring people living their best midlife years and dive into essential topics like hormone changes, health optimization, weight management, blood sugar, emotional well being, relationships, beauty, and so much more. So I've had an incredible amount of surgeries in my lifetime. Some are by choice, some definitely were not necessarily by choice. They were medically necessary. I, um. But coming off of what I hope to be a final surgery in quite some time, coming off a pretty Significant lower back L5S1 disc replacement where they had to cut through my stomach, kind of like a C section scar, go in that way. It sounds pretty invasive, but apparently it's the less invasive way to do that versus going through your back and had a disc put in. This is probably the hardest surgery I have faced recovering with in my journey of surgeries. So in this episode today, what I'm gonna talk about through is one, I'm going to tell a little bit about the story about why so many surgeries and a little bit about the history on this back and why I decided to do a disc replacement surgery now, but then also most importantly, what I'm doing for recovery and why. Um, I've gotten many questions about recovery. What do I suggest what you should do for you? I'm going to share my experience and some things that I think are very general and great recommendations for a lot of people. As always, I am not a doctor. I am just a friend with a mic. I am your midlife friend with a, with a mic who happens to be through a lot of this and happens to be obsessive when it comes to research. So I'm sharing what I've done, what I've advised some clients, what I've advised friends. But you listening to this, watching to this, always take this with your own filter. You can go look up stuff yourself. Check with your doctor if you feel necessary. But I'm going to share what's been working for me and what's Worked for a lot of people that I've worked with today. So first let's, let's talk about the backstory here. No pun intended. We're going to talk about the back. Why so many surgeries? Well, this, my surgery story started actually as a three year old when I had a lump. It's funny because people make comments on my eyebrows all the time. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see I happen to have these very expressive, uneven eyebrows. And when I was, gosh, 2 to 3 years old, I had a little bit of a lump right here where I'm pointing on the outside of my right eyebrow. I still have a scar from that. And it was something that obviously scared my parents very much. It was my very first surgery. They had to go in and remove that. And when they removed it, it was the size of a grown man's fist. That's what the surgeon told them. So I had this tumor. It was benign, but it was literally in my head. Fortunately, it did not do a lot more damage. Fortunately, it was benign, but that was my very first take in surgery. Now the only residual problem from that is I do have uneven and when I, I'm expressive. So I've had many comments over the years on my forehead or my eyebrows. And that honestly started from being a two or three year old. That was my first experience with a surgery. My second experience with a surgery was at age 15. Yes, judge if you want, but I'm going to share. I had a. I had rhinoplasty at age 15. I had a bump on my nose. That used to really bother me. I also couldn't breathe very well. And my family was fan of plastic surgery. My mom, my dad, they were on board. They had no issue. I was a 15 year old. I don't regret it. I did it. I did it at age 15. That was my second surgery. Okay, years later, let's just talk about. I'm gonna get the cosmetic stuff out of the way and then we'll, we'll talk a little bit about kind of the medical stuff, the cosmetic stuff. The reason I've had so many surgeries is at age 19, I had my first breast augmentation. And that is something I actually do regret. And I'll tell you why. Many of you heard my stories before. I've since explanted, but that started me on a trajectory of 33 years. Yep, 33 years of breast implant problems. So first set was.

Gosh, I was 19. All they had at the time was silicone, had Those. And one of them ruptured. And this is years ago. If you listen to anything about explants now or ruptured implants, when they remove a ruptured implant now, they take out your whole capsule that comes with it. And with me at that age, at. When I got them at 19, it was about 21 or 22 when it ruptured. They didn't do that. They weren't. These weren't something that they were really familiar. They had never heard of bii that wasn't a thing. They didn't even talk about silicone being dangerous at the time. They also did not know when you have a rupture that you have to remove the whole capsule. So what happened with me is I had one that was super hard, super hard. It had something called capsular contracture. And I had another that felt really natural and squishy. And I remember I went consult after consult, and each doctor said, oh, wow, this one, you really got a winner. And this one. This is interesting. So this was about the time I didn't know it had ruptured. It was about the time that they were starting to be aware that silicone could have some problems. And so this is the early 90s, and saline was becoming the thing. So I went in to have them replace the silicone with saline. And I remember waking up to my mom standing over me because I was in my early 20s, and she was really mad I was coming out of recovery. And she said, I should have just told them to take those darn things out. Well, I think she should have. Now, looking back, because what happened was when that surgeon went in there and went to go pull out the. And replace them, he didn't know anything about ruptures. We didn't do any kind of imaging before. Now they do imaging before you have replacements. And when he went to cut in there, there was silicone gel everywhere. Like, all over my whole body, like, already in everywhere. So they used a liposuction to get out that gel. And he cleaned me up. He replaced me with saline. Okay. First mass, obviously, lots of red flags going on here. I know what you're thinking. On the other side of this. It is what it is. I'm 53 at the time of this recording. This is what happened years and years ago. So this started my journey of issues with breast implants. And starting with. Gosh, I haven't. I have two autoimmunes. I will never know if that's from that original rupture. I literally have two autoimmune I have celiac and Hashimoto's and up. Autoimmune is always triggered by stress. I don't know. That could have been that initial rupture. Still didn't learn my lesson. Being a young adult in my 20s, I kept getting capsular contracture. And every time I got capsular contracture, which. It's my belief that when you have a foreign object in your body that your body does not want, it will create scar tissue around it. Kind of almost like trying to push it out of your body. And the reason I don't think I ever fully felt sick or had a lot of issues from implants over the years other than cosmetically, is because I always would get capsular contracture. But my brain, this is not so intelligent. I admit this. I never could. I never took it as, oh, my body just doesn't want them. I kept thinking, well, gosh, I better go replace them again. I better go get the capsule out. So, long story short, on the implant, to close the loop, there is 33 years, five different sets. Yep. I know, it's crazy. And then ultimately, when I had a rupture finally, with my actual. The kind of gummy implant that's not supposed to rupture, when I finally had that rupture happen.

I was like, I'm done. I'm absolutely done. I can't do this. I'm already 53. I'm not going to be replacing my implants at 70, 80, 90 years old. So done with it. So removed it. Here's a picture of what that rupture looked like when it came out. Dr. Richard Brown, I give him a lot of credit because I had gone to him not even to ask for a replace to. For a removal first. I went there first saying, I guess I should replace them. And he said, I really think it's time you take them out, out and really think this through. So, so glad I did that. Done other podcast episodes about that. One of the best decisions I ever made. My body went back to such a healthy space after removing those. Okay, so that, that sums up a lot of the surgeries, Right? Okay, so those are a lot of the cosmetic things. Then let's talk about my back here and why that created a bunch of other surgeries. So about, gosh, 15, 20 years ago, I don't know. I'm getting older, so I get the dates mixed up here. About 15, 20 years ago, I started having a lot of hip issues. Hip issues. And I kept going to the orthopedic surgeon and they would do an MRI or X ray, whatever, on my hips. They looked fine. And I kept doing cortisone shots. Now, granted, I was not in the health space that I am in now. I was younger, I didn't know any reason I shouldn't do that, but I would do cortisone shots. And as it turns out, it wasn't actually my hips ever. It was my lower back. When you have lower back disc issues like L5S1, even L4, L5, you can feel that in your hips. Because if your disc is compromised or you have degenerative disc disease, you, your other areas, your body will start taking on that pressure. So the reason I had hip issues all those years ago was not actually my hips, it was my back. And I was feeling it in my hips. So that, that was that. So we finally figured out it was my back. And all that you could see on an MRI was that my L5S1 had some serious degeneration. So that was a very real thing. And there's really not a cure for degeneration. You just have to learn to work around it. Some people have degeneration. Like if I were to do an MRI on every one of you listening, a lot of you would have degeneration. Some of you feel of it, some of you don't. We're all mechanically a little different. Some people really feel it, some, some don't. So the degeneration in itself is not necessarily the whole problem here. The problem is, is when it starts degenerating, your disc can start sliding around. Thus the term slipped disc. I slipped a disc. That means your disc, the gooey stuff inside the vertebrae can move up, down, side, not up down, side to side, squishy. So when you have a disc bulge or a slip dish, that means if you picture, I don't know, two pieces of bread with a soft boiled egg and you push it down and it kind of slips out to one side. That's a slip disc or a disc bulge. So I had that going on for years. And this is when I was starting to get in the workout space and I'd have like flare ups and I would learn how to work around it. I'd go to physical therapy, I go to chiropractic. I do all the things trying to work around it, but it never really fixes your degeneration. It just kind of slips back in and back out. So brings me to, gosh, eight, almost nine years ago now. I was on set filming some intense workout stuff. And we were filming many, many hours. Oh, My gosh. I think we were going on, like, nine hours, and my back was in a lot of pain, and I ignored it. I kept pushing through, like many of us do. Don't judge. I was pushing through.

And mind over matter. I was pushing through and my disc ruptured out. Now, how do I know it ruptured out? Well, a lot of reasons. One, it was the most excruciating pain I've ever experienced in my life. Like, it ruptured out. And it ruptured out so bad that the next morning when I woke up from my piriformis all the way down to my ankle was numb. And I. I had something called foot drop, which meant I was dragging my leg as I would walk. Not exaggerating. It's called foot drop. Look it up. It was scary. It was dangerous. That was what I was navigating. So I was in Florida. I got myself back to California, literally dragging my leg. Got to the airplane, got home immediately, made appointments with all the places, chiropractor, bodywork, people. None of them knew what the heck was going on. They. But they should have alarmed and they should have said this. With foot drop, you need an mri. So I'm still. I'm still a little bitter about that. Didn't say it. Finally called my friend who was an orthopedic surgeon. He got me in for X ray, mri, all the things, and he's like, we have an urgent problem. Not did your disc, not only did it just slip and poof out or side, it is ruptured out, and it is all over your spine, it is all over your nerves. If you do not get this taken care of right now, you could lose control of your bladder. I was like, wait, what? No. Sound the alarm. So that's when he introduced me to Dr. Kim, Dr. Shoal Kim in San Diego, who I'm friends with till this day. Dr. Kim does us a very special technique called laser endoscopic spine surgery, which it's very minimally invasive. He goes through your back. Very, very quick procedure. Like 30, 45 minutes. He goes in there, he removes the rupture with a laser. He does not touch your spine. He's just removing the disc that matter that ruptured. And it was amazing. Like, instantly out of pain. And then my leg started to slowly heal over the course of a few months. Got all. Pretty much all function back other than a slight delay. And that delay is going to be relevant in just a second when I explain why. But that surgery, they do not fuse you. They do not Do a disc replacement. It's a, a very minimally invasive type of discectomy or microdiscectomy. When you hear the term disectomy or microdiscectomy, that means that we're either removing the whole disc or they're removing part of the disc. So it's a very common surgery. When you have a disc bulge that doesn't seem to go back in, or it's constantly bothering you, they'll do a disc, a microdiscectomy. However, a microdiscectomy is still pretty invasive. A laser endoscopic one. They go in, very minimally invasive, through your back. Tiny, tiny, tiny scar, Poof, it's out, it's done. Okay, why? First of all, it was a great choice at the time, but why didn't I do a fusion then or a disc replacement at that time? Well, at that time, disc replacement had a very low success rate, 80% success rate, which is not considered good and very invasive. Two weeks in the hospital, a lot of pain. I think they cut through your back at that time. Just not, just not ideal at the time. So I asked about a fusion. A fusion means they basically lock your vertebrae together with some hardware. Meaning? So nothing. The disc won't collapse anymore, it won't expand, it won't slip. So they're fusing it, they're locking it together. So instead of a space, if you're looking on YouTube, I have a space between my hands right here. Instead of this, they lock it together, they put a cage there, lock it. So now it moves as one unit versus separately like it would with a disk. So why would you not get a fusion? Well, the reason I did not want to get a fusion at the time and the reason Dr. Chul Kim recommended I didn't get a fusion at the time is once you fuse some of your vertebrae together, what happens is because they start to move as one unit, you don't initially feel pain. But the ones above and below start to have excessive wear and tear. So you start getting other problems with the disc below it, the disc above it. And in my case, L5S1 is your lowest one. So my hips would and knees and everything else would start having problems. So I was like not doing a fusion out of the story. I'll wait till there's a better disc replacement. Went on with my life now. What happened from there? Well, every now and then I felt great for many years. I would have some, a little bit of flare up, some pain just cause I have no disc there now. And What I learned was if I really focus on taking the disc out of the equation, L5s1 out of the equation, because I have no disc there, if I take that out of the equation, meaning I really learned to activate my glutes, really have a strong core, then I won't need to use that disc and I'll basically trick the system and I won't need to use that disc. Right.

That is good advice for partially good advice. It's partially good advice in the intermediate. For me, it allowed me to function, it allowed me to work out, it allowed me to stay active by really focusing on building my core and my glutes. So when you guys look at me and you think, or maybe you did eight years ago, and you're like, gosh, she's such a solid eight pack. Yeah, because I worked my butt off, literally, to have a strong core and to develop glutes to stay out of pain. Now, the caveat is when you have no disc between L5S1 or major disc problem, so you're navigating a bulge. It is very hard to do traditional glute exercises to put on size. So compression squats, squats where you have weight on your shoulder, leg presses out of the equation. It doesn't work. Now, some of you listening might say, well, I can do them for now. Great, I could too, sometimes. Until you can't. When there's no cushion between L5s1, it's going to put a huge amount of strain on your other areas, your knees, your hips, everything. So my exercises were things like glute bridges, were things like hip thrust, were a lot of body weight things. So I just did what I can to have strong glutes to take myself out of pain. Now, this worked for a number of years, but here is where the story gets really wild. The reason I had so many other surgeries is. Remember I told you earlier that I had this. This rupture that had happened eight years ago, and I had stopped being able to use my right leg. Well, when I had that damage from that rupture, when my leg healed, I started having a delay on my right side. Your neurological. Your brain is very strongly connected to your spine. And I have a very. It's very slight. Started to have a very slight neurological delay on the right side of my body. Meaning if I'm running or taking a step or hiking or whatever, my brain thinks my. My foot or my hand or whatever is grabbing at a different pace than it actually is. It's the only way I can explain it and I used to tell Dr. Kim this. I would say I have a delay on the right side of my body. So what that delay caused, and believe me, I did a lot of work to try to reconnect my brain here like I did. I went through all the like natural things to do.

What that created was this slight delay gave me a lot of right side injuries. So if you all maybe you remember, if you follow me, I tore my right bicep. That's why I tore my bicep. My body, my mind thought I was grabbing different timing than I actually was. Tore my bicep. Literally tore it at the distal. I broke my right foot. Tripping also makes sense. Right sided delay. I broke my right toe right sided. So the right sided injuries are why I had all of these surgeries over the years. There were injuries when, when some people are messaging like you, you keep getting injured. That was why it's all related to that initial L5S1 rupture and creating that, that neurological disconnect. Okay, so let's fast forward here. So I talked a little bit about the cosmetic surgery earlier and then I'm talking about this. I've learned a thing or two about recovery. Obviously, I've had many surgeries over the years. So I've played with different ways to recover. But where this really started to tie together. And I'm going to come back to the back, but I want to talk about my eyes for a minute. Was I very publicly about a year and a half ago or almost two years ago now, didn't it? I shared my explant on social media. I did the explant with a lift. I'm like a negative A now. Yes, I'm fine with it. I went from a double D to a negative A. I, I shared that, that story publicly because I wanted to, to share awareness about explant. And that was after sharing about the bicep tear and all the other things. Then about a year ago, I decided I wanted to get my eyelids done. I was upper ble, lower ble, fat transfer, CO2 laser. I also shared that publicly. Why did I share that publicly? I don't share every aspect of my life publicly, but I shared that publicly because a lot of midlife women didn't know that was an option, that they can not have their droopy eyelids. You can have this BL surgery. But when I did the bleph surgery, I did upper lower CO2 laser. It was pretty extensive and a fat transfer right here. So when I shared that, I really Interestingly, recovered at hyperspeed within six days. You could not tell I had anything done. And that is not common for upper and lower. And even my surgeon was like, you're healing really flipping fast. So at that time, I realized all of these things I've learned about recovery because I've had so many fricking surgeries over the years actually works because I thought it worked because body wise, things I was doing, but now I could visibly see it. And I'm going to put a picture if you're looking on YouTube. I want you to see how fast this healed because of the stuff I learned about recovery. So back to the backstory. So the last thing I thought I would be doing recently was having a disc replacement. And I'm gonna tell you why I ended up doing that and how this is gonna stop other injuries. And then I'm gonna share all these recovery things because again, I'm applying these things on my recovery here, and I want to share what all those things are. So I know this is a long story here, lots of different, different twists and turns, but lots to share here. So then what happened was I did the eye surgery. I think I'm like, done with surgery. I'm like, I'm done with everything until I'm 60, and maybe I want a facelift. Like, I want a full facelift at 60. I. I'm like, I'm done with everything. That's what I decided. Well, my back had other stories. So now I'm, you know, eight years out from that disc rupture. I'm as strong as I can be, core and glute wise. And I start realizing that my muscle is definitely shrinking in my glutes. That's the first thing. It's just a cosmetic thing. I noticed. I'm like, gosh, my glutes, they just are not strong. I'm like, I don't know why I can't get them stronger. So I instantly constantly go into, how can I up the weights, how can I, you know, obviously add more food, add all these things? And I start trying to increase the weight on my exercises, and I start getting debilitating hip pain, like, so bad, and back flare ups again. And I hadn't really had back flare ups. I'm like, all right, that's not going to work. So then I would take a week off from that and I start feeling a little better. I go back to the gym again, start light, same thing. So now, no matter what I was doing, exercise was with my glutes or legs. Is Creating this crazy hip and back pain. And it's starting to create some other neurological issues. So I start getting those zingers again on my right leg, these electrical zingers. I start getting blurred vision on my left eye. What does that have to do with it? I'm gonna tell you in a minute. I start having these other issues and I start having like really dark thoughts about pain. So I'm. I'm somebody who tends to bounce back from things. I look at things glass half full. I tend to be positive. I try to look at all that, and I start having really dark thoughts about aging. And I start thinking like, wow, am I going to be one of those people just always in pain? Am I just deteriorating? And here I know logically, the more muscle we have, the better we're going to age. I mean, muscle is that longevity thing. And I can't add muscle because something's really wrong here with my back. And I, and I understand the reason my hips and everything are hurting is I have this no disc in my back. So I reach out to Dr. Kim first, who did my initial surgery, and I'm like I asked. This is like I started asking him this over the course of a year or two, what are my options here? And he kept saying, well, I don't want you to do a fusion unless it's absolutely urgent. Like if it's your last, last choice, Fusions are just too risky. If he was. I do have somebody that has perfected a disc replacement. So if we get to that, I'll introduce you to him. So that was kind of like the side convers. But he also told me Dr. Kim did that if I let my back the L5S1 auto fuse, if they it on its own, it's so collapsed, if it's so close to fusing, if it auto fuses, all that pain could stop. So that's what I believed. Now, Dr. Kim did not give me wrong information. If your back auto fuses, your initial back pain does cease, it does stop. The issue is you have no control over an auto fuse. What it's auto fusing to? Is it auto fusing with nerves? Is it shrinking your. What's it doing when it's auto fusing? So what was happening behind the scenes on my spine is it was starting to auto fuse. It was so severely collapsed, so severely collapsed and starting to auto fuse and cave down in one area that that's why I was getting all of this pain. Now you listening might have said, well, if you don't work out, you don't have pain. Great. So was that my answer? I'm just never gonna work out and. No, I'm not. We just stop working out and stop movement and let our mus just completely go away. That is going to create rapid aging. That was not an option for me. So I kept thinking, I'm going to find a way. I did all the things I eat anti inflammatory. I did all the recovery hacks. Not. Not a lot of the ones I'm going to share right now, but the recovery things. I went to physical therapy. I tried chiropractic. I did all the things. Acupuncture, all the. All of the things y'. All. I did stem cells. I did prp, which, by the way, if you have no disc, PRP and stem cells will not regrow your disc, period. Do not waste your money on that. It's not going to regrow a completely MIA disc. I. Believe me, I'm the one who signed up as a dummy and paid for all that. And it did absolutely nothing expensive. Nothing. So that it has. Regenerative medicine definitely has a place, but not for that. Not for that. Now, if it could regrow a whole disc, like, if it could grow a disc in a petri dish, that would be a great use of regenerative medicine. It's not where the science is right now. So fast forward. I'm sitting in my sunlight and infrared sauna, which I absolutely freaking love. I'm sitting in there because I'm doing that, like, religiously every day, trying to be out of pain, and it's helping but not fixing. And I'm listening to podcasts, and I happen to scroll my friend Max Lugavier's genius life. And he happens. I'm scrolling his topics, and he has one on his recent L5S1 disc replacement. I'm like, what? No way. So I start listening to it, and Max is describing every single thing in my back minus one big, huge part. The big, huge part he didn't have that I had is he didn't have that severe collapse because he didn't have that rupture so many years ago. And the complete collapse. He was where I was like, eight years ago or nine years ago. So I'm listening to this and I'm like, this is my answer. Wait, what? I need this. And he's doing this episode with a surgeon doctor amendment. And I'm listening to this, and I'm like, I. I gotta learn more about this procedure. And all of a sudden, it hits me. I'm like, wait, I think this is the surgeon that Dr. Cho Kim mentioned to me years ago that was really good at disc replacement. And it turned out it was. So I was like, okay, meant to be. So I text Dr. Kim. I'm like, was this surgeon? Yep. He connects me on text. I get on the phone with Dr. Ament right away and we end up doing a zoom consultation. And he. I describe everything. He's like, I might be able to help you, but until I see your new MRI and CAT scan, I. I don't know, you might be too far collapsed. So he orders me a new MRI and CAT scan and let me show you guys the picture again. Here I am, severe collapsed. Here, severe. Like this is the worst it can be. Like, what I'm showing you here is the absolute worst thing that can happen when you lose a disc or have a ruptured disc. I have it right here. This is what I've walked through for many years. And he was concerned that it was starting to auto fuse. You can see this area here where it's literally auto fusing. And he said, natalie, it's gonna be a tough surgery. I'll tell you why. Because not only do I need to go in and open this auto fuse, I need to break it open. Not only do I need to do that, but we're gonna have to put a disc inside of this and expand. And they make all different sizes of disc, but the disc, the smallest disc they have might even be too big for this space. So this was like one of those great, what do I do? Ask. The price of surgery almost fell over. I'm not gonna lie, y'. All. It's like the price of a huge down payment for a house. It's not cheap. That's a whole nother thing. But it's my back and this is my life and the quality of my life. And even my husband was like, what choices do we have here? So I started getting, I can't say the words, excited. But I started getting hopeful about the possibility of being able to fix something and actually being out of pain. And I went back and forth with Dr. Ahmet many times and I said things like, what if I don't fix it? What am I? Like, what if I don't fix it? And that is the part that really scared him and scared me. He said, you have more risk of not, not fixing this than you do of fixing it. Meaning all that pain I was starting to feel, all those right sided injuries, all of this collapsing, my legs, getting weaker, all of these things. I would literally risk eventually not being able to walk. And that was enough to scare me into, I've got to do this. So let's talk about that surgery for a minute. So that surgery that they do, it's actually less invasive to go through your stomach, believe it or not, because your spine. And he's a neurologist, by the way, so he works on brain and spine. It is more, more risky to cut through your back than it is to go directly through your stomach. Move your stuff aside and go through your, and, and do that there. Open up your disc that way. Now I'm going to be really real with you. Like, I pride myself on my abs, on physique, on working out, on being healthy. And it's not usual for a woman to have an eight pack even after having a baby. I've never had a tummy tuck. I've never had any kind of stomach surgery. Believe me, I've had my share of plastic surgery. I never did anything on my stomach. So this is a vanity thing for me. And it's part of my identity. And you can say it's shallow. All it's want. I've cried to many of my friends about it, to my husband. I got it, it might be shallow to you. It's part of my identity, like my abdominal area, my core. And to know that you had to cut through there, a huge scar, which by the way, it's like three and a half inches now. Move my stuff aside, go in there, go to my spine, open it up and put this disc in there. It was freaking me out for a lot of reasons. One cosmetically, pain wise, what's gonna happen, you gotta expand. Everything about it was freaking me out and scaring me, everything about it.

That being said.

Had the surgery decided I was gonna do it, I was like, I've gotta do it, prep myself for it. And what the surgeon warned me was that I just need to really warn you here. When you do this surgery, because you're so collapsed, not only is your stomach going to be sore from cutting through that your back will likely go into a spasm because we have to correct your spine three quarters of an inch. Like we're going to literally have to correct it and your back is not going to know what to do with that and it's going to go into a spasm. So I was very prepared for that part of this procedure, went into the surgery, very prepared for that, woke up, felt fine. The next day felt pretty okay. It was the day after that when all the blocks were off. I will say I had three or four days of. It's a blur to me because it was so painful. My back was literally in an entire spasm. It was stressful.

It was painful. And what I took for that was muscle relaxers. What I took for that was.

He gave me. What's it called, Celebrex. What I wanted to take for that was some hardcore painkillers. They don't really do that in la. Just so you know, LA had a very bad opioid crisis, or they did. So they're very strict about pain pills. So you get like a Super Tylenol, basically. But I at one point was begging for painkillers. I'm like. And, you know, I actually. I went on ChatGPT and I'm like. I asked all about the LA and opioid and all the stuff there, and. And it said even for extremely painful abdominal or back surgeries, they don't. And I'm thinking I just had both. Oh, my God. So when I got back, because we didn't. We. It's outpatient. You don't stay in a hospital anymore. They used to keep you in the hospital two weeks for this procedure. I was. It was outpatient. I was at a hotel. The surgery was on a Friday. Monday, I'm in extreme pain. We do the consult, the final leg clear. We fly home. Yes, I flew home. My husband carried the bags, all the things. Short flight from LA to Phoenix.

Shout out, by the way. I flew jsx, which is. It's like. It's not private, but it's semi private. It's at a private airport, so you don't have. It's not all the deal like you would flying at a regular commercial airport. So it made it a little easier. But flew home and we had a. An expired bottle of oxycodone from my husband like eight years ago. And I didn't care. I was like, give me that right now. And had a little bit of relief. So definitely.

My advice on surgery and I mean, there's a reason for pain pills. Like, if you need to take them for a few days, you need to take them for a few days. So if you're having surgery in la, I would definitely ask your surgeon the pain plan there. I probably didn't beg my surgeon enough for something stronger, but yeah, I had some rough days there. Anyways, that. That part's over. So then. Then moving on to that. What was happening is where that C section scar. It's not a C section, but the same kind of scar that they do for A C section where I had that, because they go through there. Move your stuff aside and to get to your back. I had this huge stomach distension. I'm going to show a picture right here just so you can see what it looked like. My stomach blew up like a freaking balloon. And it was painful, like, so painful, y'. All. So this is what my stomach looked like. And that was messing with my head, too. Cause I'm like, this. This ever going to go down. What's wrong with this? And that took almost two weeks to resolve. So if you have any kind of surgery that go through your stomach, just know it could take literally almost two weeks to resolve. I'll tell you how I sped that up a little bit, but took about two weeks to resolve. So here's what happened then. So then six, seven days later, my back felt great. I can bend as I'm talking to you. I'm sitting. It doesn't hurt. I can bend at my waist. No pain in my back. Bloating pretty much. Extension pretty much gone.

What then happened? I'm thinking I'm recovering. Amazing. What then happened was this really freaking interesting leg pain that I'm still navigating at the time of recording this for you. So what happened was I'm actually 3/4 of an inch taller post surgery. Literally 3/4 of an inch post surgery taller because they had to un. Collapse my spine, put a disc in there. He literally added three quarters of an inch to my height, which is cool. That's wild. But all my nerves have to catch up. All my everything. All the nerves in my legs now are being stretched quickly. So he did a very fast correction. My back went into a spasm. But now what's happening is I've got this crazy wild nerve pain that's from stretching my leg so quickly. And I have not asked Max about this, but I'm assuming he did not have that because he wasn't as collapsed. So a big lesson in this was you want to get this type of surgery before you're fully collapsed and fused like this to avoid that pain. So I don't know how that will end up panning out, to be honest with you. It is. Nerve pain, if any of you have experienced, is quite different than muscle pain or any other kind of pain. It's very weird. It's like an electrical, shocky feeling. It zaps you, and it feels like you're being stretched and pulled. So, you know, like last night I was complaining my hamstrings, like, hurts so bad, and my hamstrings hurt because I'm literally being pulled. So it feels like they're sore, but they're just cause they're being stretched. Same thing with the outside of my calves feeling like they're being stretched and pulled. So that's where I'm navigating right now. So let's talk about recovery a minute. First of all, am I glad I had this surgery? Yeah. I do not regret having the surgery. No question. I don't love the leg situation right now. I know it's temporary. I know it's going to go away. I know it's a matter of time. I know that I had to do this surgery for my future self. And if you are someone that's navigating the choice choice between a fusion or a disc replacement, I highly recommend you look at the disc replacement options that have been way since improved. Consult with Dr. Amen if you want, but I think it's a better choice than a fusion for many people. You know, he has this whole thing he shares on social all the time about stop the madness. And he's literally talking about this madness of all these fusions because fusions are only a temporary fix. They don't. He's had to correct so many people that had a fusion that now have other disc problems. So I would say there's that two. What do I wish I had done different? I wish I had done it a lot sooner. A lot sooner. I also wish I had saved some pain pills, not thrown them out from a past surgery and had them for this. I'm not gonna lie. That's something I wish. Okay, let's talk about recovery for a minute. Because I promised you I'd share sort of this recovery protocol. I narrowed it down and I'm gonna. There's gonna be a picture that we'll put up, but I'm holding one up here too. Of from my actual recovery guide of like day one through day six of my eye surgery and how fast I healed. And it's really because of this protocol. And I've added a few things in for this back, but I actually have a recovery guide and it's below for you too where I'm going to list all these out. But I want to go through some of these and tell you why I chose to do these. Okay. The number one first thing is something called BPC157 and that is a peptide. And you do need to get a prescription either from a naturopath or a functional medicine doctor or your regular doctor. I would not just buy it on the dark web, you have to get. You should get a prescription and get it from a compounding lab. But BP157 is an actual peptide that you can inject or take orally, and it's known for accelerating tissue repair, reducing inflammation, and supporting your own body's natural healing. So they make it in oral formula. But to me, the oral is great. If you've got gut issues, I like to use the injectable kind. And you can inject it at home. You do it daily. So I keep it in my fridge. I inject it daily. So I started that as soon as I got back. And for my eye surgery, I did it that day from this. I did it actually, like the second day after surgery. But it actually will help your body repair itself. So that's a peptide called BPC157. The next thing I did is I talk about minerals all the time. I think a lot of us are mineral deficient. I am a huge fan of beam minerals, but they have a topical mineral spray, and you could spray it directly on your skin. Your skin is your biggest organ. It will absorb right away. So with my eye surgery, I sprayed that stuff all day long. I was like, all day long. And I believe it helped accelerate healing. With my back, I've been spraying it on my legs, on my back, on my wound, everywhere. I spray that. So. So beam minerals is a topical, easy thing to add.

Hyperbaric oxygen. Okay, so that's also called hbot. Now, there's different types of hyperbaric oxygen chambers. I used to actually have a soft chamber one that I rented in my house. I'm not really a fan of the soft chamber ones. Now that I understand the hardcore surgical ones, the hard chamber hyperbaric oxygen chambers, they're. They're glass and they're large. And they have a lot of rules. You can't bring your cell phone in it. You have to be wearing all cotton. You can't have any oil or makeup or hairspray or anything on your skin. Oxygen is highly flammable, as you know. So the. The surgical grade medical H spots rapidly help speed up healing. Now.

For my eyes, I did three sessions and a surgical grade one pretty quickly after. And I know that's what sped up my healing. So hyperbaric oxygen, you just want to look on your. Either your chat sheet, GBT or your Google, and you want to find one in your area that is surgical approved. You want a high medical grade, they're 90 minutes. If they tell you you can bring your cell phone in it is not strong enough. So you want that kind. So hyperbaric oxygen, if you can't get to a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, that's fine. But that is one of those things that really speeds up healing. Okay, the next thing, red light and infrared. So let's talk about that for a minute. So red light therapy has gotten a lot of buzz lately because it's like the ultimate anti ag healing tool. Like, we love that. Like, who doesn't love that? So red light, you're kind of seeing everywhere, but the kind matters. And the really amazing thing about red light therapy is it reduces inflammation. And it does this by also boosting cellular energy. So it works at a deep cellular level, stimulating your mitochondria, which is basically the powerhouse of your cells. And it feels good. So the red light light therapy I did right on my face right after my eyes, and right now, post surgery with my back, I've been putting it on. I sit in front of it morning and night. I sit in front of it even where my incision was. And I do 20 minutes in the morning, and I do 20 minutes at night, front and back. So red light is awesome. It also stimulates collagen production, which is a huge bonus. Huge bonus. So I have, believe it or not, I have five red lights in my house. I have five of them because I've tried so many of them. But the one that I absolutely love, and I'm gonna link it below, it's my absolute favorite. I was waiting for them to come out with this, and I'm so flipping glad that they did, is by sunlight and sauna. So that same sauna I talk about all the time, that same sauna that I'm obsessed with, and I, you guys have maybe seen me in on my social all the time. That is the same company that makes a red light one now. Now the reason I love their red light panel is, first of all, it's pretty. It's like white with a nice wooden box. It's comes with its own stand. It has infrared and red light. It also lets you choose the amount of time. So you can do 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15, 20. You can choose the time. It has, like a fan in it too, so it doesn't get super crazy hot. So this is my absolute favorite one. And I'm gonna, I'm gonna put all this below, but I'm gonna also tell you that one right now, because if you go to, let's see, get dot sunlighten. So this is a kind of a long link, but get.sunlighten.com nataliejillred. You will get a discount and you can get a direct link to go check this one out. I'll also put that link below and I'll also put it in my recovery guide below. But red light is one of those things you instantly feel better. It also is going to help you recover a lot faster. So once you get cleared by your doctor, you can also do infrared sauna, which is another thing that I lived in after my eyes. So the infrared sauna is also the one I have is also by sunlight. And whether you have one at your house, which I love theirs because you can get different sizes and have them in your house, but you can also easily find a medical spa or a gym that has infrared. Infrared is different than just the ultimate regular saunas that just gets super hot. With infrared saunas, you can go at a lower heat and you're still getting the light. Light. It's the light spectrum that matters. The red light and the infrared that helps you heal and helps you turn over cells. So I actually have both at my house. They're both by sunlight and I'm obsessed with both. I'll also put links down here for you to look. But with sunlighten, if you tell them Natalie Jill sent you, you can get a huge discount. They'll also make you a priority. So lots of benefits there. But I'll put links for all this below. But sunlighten, I can't say enough good things about their red light panel. And like I said, I have a lot of red light panels at my house, but theirs is my actual absolute favorite. That and the, and the sauna. Okay, so next, what else did I do recovery wise? Walked every day. Now, I did not want to walk, I do not want to walk as I'm recording this. But walking, even in pain, helps you get to the other side. So walking has been another huge recovery thing I've been doing every day. In fact, this morning before I recorded this, I was complaining about how much pain I was in. I was like, oh, my hamstrings, my calves. I started walking like a flipping turtle. Started walking very slow. The longer I walked, the longer I walked, the better I felt. So I just kept walking. So walking is huge. Okay, a couple other supplements I want to tell you about. Hydrogen. Hydrogen, whether it's breathing hydrogen or hydrogen water is huge for us. It helps with so many things that calms inflammation, it supports our immune system, it helps clear out free radicals. My really good friend Cash Khan, who is DNA expert, he swears by Hydrogen breathing. He said it's like the hack that's cut him out of like so many, cut off so many supplements. I actually do have two hydrogen units in my house. I'm testing out. I'm not ready to recommend which one for you yet, but I have a breathing one I've been doing post recovery. But if you don't have a breathing unit, what you could do, which I still do too when I'm traveling and so forth, is hydrogen water. And I have the tablets and I'm going to link those in the recovery guide as well. The tablets I use for recovery are amazing. You can get flavored or non just drop them in your water, you drink it and you actually get that hydrogen, which is a really easy, inexpensive thing to add. Okay. A few other things I want to make sure I mention probiotics. Why probiotics for recovery? Well, when you are in surgery and you, your gut's going to get messed up, whether they give you antibiotics after mine did not or during mine did, you always have antibiotics during your actual procedure. That will mess up your gut. So will all the other drugs are giving you like Celebrex and all the things. It's all gonna take a toll on your gut and the stress of the surgery, all of it. Everything about surgery is screwing up your gut. So it is critical that you're taking a good probiotic before and after that. What I do is just thrive. I use their spore based probiotic also. I'll link all this in the, in the recovery guide as well. But that is another thing that I, I've doubled, I double post surgery to help help speed things up. The next thing I want to talk about protein for a minute. So when it comes to you guys, I, I talk about protein a lot. Obviously we need protein for muscle growth. You protein keeps us full longer. A lot of benefits of pro protein when you are in recovery mode, whether you're dealing with pain or you have an autoimmune that's in pain or you're having a surgery or trauma, whatever it is, when your body is throwing attention towards that, you are more likely to, to to utilize your own muscle. And that's not good. So you. We don't want to lose muscle. Part of our healing and being able to be mobile is to have a lot of muscle and to feel be healthy muscle. So protein becomes really important. So what I want to talk about here are two products that are going to help support that. One, Digestive enzymes. Because you could be eating protein but if your body is compromised in its gut. It's not fully breaking things down. We need to have make sure we're having digestive enzymes so we're truly utilizing our food. So mass zymes, I'll link this below too, are very much an important one. Something that I insist that we add, especially in midlife. By the way, aside from surgery and recovery, if you are over 35, you have less digestive enzymes. So we want to make sure we're substituting with digestive enzymes so we are getting all of our nutrients. So I use mass times before surgery, I would have about two per meal. Post surgery, I'm having about four with each meal right now because everything feels sluggish. The other thing, and I didn't talk a lot about this with my eyes, but I don't know why I didn't talk about it, because I was definitely doing them is aminos. So if you are my age, we used to learn about BCAAs, like the three amino acids that are essential. And that's a bunch of baloney. We know now we actually need all nine essential aminos. They're all essential. We need all of them. And after your surgery or trauma or any of that, your body basically turns into a total construction site. So we need any support we we can get to hold onto muscle and bounce back as quick as possible. So I had been looking for a while for a clean amino, and I was having trouble finding it. A lot of them have artificial sweeteners or junk, and a lot of them aren't complete, but Kion is my favorite one. And Kion, they have a berry flavor, which is my favorite, by the way. My husband's favorite too. He keeps taking them from me. But Kion aminos are literally all nine. They are the cleanest ones that I found and they actually taste really good. So I have been doubling up on those post surgery too. And that's what's really been helpful, helping me. Okay, and the other things you all know about, but I'm just gonna say them again because that's the mother in me. We gotta rest. We gotta hydrate a lot. We gotta move and stay active. Bed rest is one of the worst things that we can do when we're healing. I know we don't feel like moving. I don't feel like moving. But it is the most important thing to get us out of pain. So yes, that deep sleep and that rest and recovery, but also doing that for. For your health. Anyways, I know I gave you a lot of information in this episode. Gosh, we were all over the place. I talked about my entire Is that like 14 surgeries? I think 14, surgery, journey, recovery, all that. But here's what below. What I'm gonna put for you is I updated my recovery guide, so my recovery guide I updated after my eye surgery, but I updated it again now so it kind of will apply at all times. So if you grab that, it's totally free. Just grab that recovery guide below. There's a link. If you go to that, you grab the guide and in there I've listed out all the things I mentioned for recovery and I even put links and discount codes if I have them. Some of the things in there I didn't have a discount code for or direct link, but I still listed it for you. So it's all easy in one place and I will put that below for you. Anyways, I hope you found this helpful. I know it was a big long, rambling update. If you want more solo updates like this, please let me know. Let me know. I'm curious. Do you want more interviews? Do you want more solo talk? Talk to me and let me know. And as always, I appreciate you being here. Till next time, thanks for tuning in to midlife Conversations today. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it and tag me Natalie, Jill Fitz and our guest on social Media the best way to support the show is by leaving a review. Send a screenshot of your review to supportnataliejillfitness.com for a free digital DSR journal download. And just a friendly reminder, I'm here with a microphone, not a medical degree. Half the time I'm sharing things that I read on the Internet or learned just as you were learning it while I'm interviewing the guest. I'm not an MD or your therapist or your mom, though I do give excellent mom style pep talks. This podcast is purely for entertainment, curiosity and educational purposes. When in doubt, please please ask your own doctor. For advertising inquiries, contact sales admintegory3ca and this podcast is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek advice from your physician. Some episodes of midlife conversation may be sponsored by products or services and I may receive compensation for advertisement of your purchases through affiliate links. Thanks.