Back Surgery Recovery - Ruptured Disc Procedure| Natalie Jill

Hi, guys. Today I wanted to jump on and share with you my back surgery, rehabilitation. Tell those of you new to my page what had happened and what I'm doing to get back to where I was and how it may help you. So first of all, just a little refresher on what I went through. For those of you new to my page or that missed the story before, I want to share exactly what happened, how, how I got injured, and what I'm doing to fix this. So, hi. Okay, so first of all, what I just had recently had done was called a laser endoscopic spine surgery. And the reason I had that was I had for a long time a bulging disc. It was slightly bulging. Slightly bulging. A lot of people get a slightly bulging disc. And I was able to fully manage that through my workouts, through my training, through a lot of core training, through all of that. But what happened was over time, as I age, I'm 45 years old, as I'm 45, things start to change. And what I was doing started to not work as well. Even though I would get flare ups and be able to mask the pain temporarily, it just kept escalating. And then about, let's see, it was about five or six weeks ago now. I was really pushing things and my back started hurting like I've never felt in my life, like crazy back pain. It was worse than labor pains. And for those of you who have given labor, you know what I'm talking about, it was seriously worse than labor pains. And I didn't know what was wrong. I didn't know why my back hurt so bad. And everything I knew to do, press ups and planks and all this stuff to help fix that, was not working. So I went and had an mri. And what had happened was my disc had not only just bulged, it, it had now herniated and it had actually ruptured. And when it ruptured, there was disc material everywhere and it was severely impinging my spine and it was wrapped around two nerves. So what happened was not my back pain stopped hurting, but all of a sudden my leg, my right leg wasn't working at all. It was it all of a sudden from my piriformis, which for those of you don't know, piriformis is right here, all the way down to my foot. It's like it was turned off. And whatever my brain was telling it to do, it was not doing. So if any of you know what sciatica is, I would get sciatica, which was, that's a nerve path down that leg. So if I was sitting and would go to standing, I would get this shooting electrical pain, felt like an electrical shock and it would throb. But even worse than that, my leg was not working right. It wasn't working right. So when I would go to walk, just normal walk, I was dragging my foot and, and foot drop is when your foot actually drops and I would start dragging my foot. So it was escalating every day. My back had stopped hurting, but the leg pain was getting worse and worse and I was basically dragging my foot as I walked. So it was super scary. No natural remedy would have fixed that. And let me explain. Yes, because you get disc matter to maybe dissolve on its own, eventually absorb into your body. Because you get the size of my herniation. If you don't believe me, I've got an MRI you can look at. But the size of my herniation was so huge and the rupture was so severe that the longer I was going to wait for surgery, the more I was going to risk losing permanent use of that, those nerves and had permanent nerve damage and not being able to use my leg. And I don't know about you and your opinions, but for me it was not an option anymore. I wanted surgery and I wanted it fast. So my options for surgery were really two things. One, something called a microdiscectomy. And a microdiscectomy is when they go in, it's minimally invasive and they remove that disc matter and that's about a four to six week healing time. And then you've got to start physical therapy and rehabbing. And nerves regenerate very, very slowly, like four to six months. So depending on when you had your injury and how long you wait, it can delay how long that regenerates. I know a lot of people had messaged me and said I had that happen and it took me two years to get my leg feeling back. Or it took them a few, few months, a few years, they still don't feel it. And that scared me. So that was option one. Option two was to have something called a less less which is a laser endoscopic spine surgery. And I chose that because it's a newer procedure. It is definitely riskier without the right surgeon. But with the right surgeon it is amazing. And it's super minimally invasive. It's a two day, two day recovery time. Two days. So you're up and out in two days. It doesn't mean your leg is better. So I want to just give you an update so here is. I'm gonna see if I can show this to you. I'm gonna show you the scar site. I'm gonna bring the camera down. Can you see this little right there? That is the scar. It's about the size of a quarter. It's a little line. That's what they do for the. For the laser and disc spine surgery. They go in very minimally invasive and remove all that disc matter without cutting through tissue, without cutting through mus. Without cutting your bone and take it away from the spine, which is phenomenal. So when I woke up, I was a little sore from the surgery site, but within two days, I had no back pain at all and no leg pain, which is just outstanding. It's outstanding. However, my right leg. My right leg here is still not working fully. It's working at about 75%. So for those of you dealing with this or know that somebody that is. I just want to show you some things that I'm doing. For starters, if I don't have shoes on, I can't stand well at all. And I'm going to show you. I'm putting this camera down here. See my feet here? Okay. Without a shoe, my foot caves in. It severely pronates. Caves in. And it kind of. If I walk, it does a swing thing. It kind of swings in. So my big toe is completely beat up right now, and it's just not working right. So what I've done is, is I had to buy special inserts for shoes that will help with pronation. So it's basically straightening out my foot. So instead of being here, it's being here. And I'm wearing running shoes pretty much 24,7. There's no heels in my future. At least now I'm not ready to give them up forever. But at least four or five months, I won't be wearing heels at all. So what I'm doing is I'm wearing those running shoes every day and I'm wearing those inserts now. That allows me to be. To be mobile, to be completely mobile. However, I have to train my brain again and that nerve path to be able to walk right without shoes. So I'm doing a little both. My ankle stability is completely shot. So what I'm doing. And this is, again, I'm not a doctor, you guys. I'm not a physical therapist. I'm just somebody with a fitness and nutrition background. I'm a licensed master sports nutritionist and functional fitness trainer. And I'm just sharing my journey and what happened with me. I do not want you to take my advice over your doctors or your own physical therapist. I'm just sharing what I went through. So for me, what I'm doing daily is although my doctor, my surgeon has given me no restrictions. He said you could do anything you want. I really can't do anything because if I were to run, I'd fall over. If I try to balance on one leg, I'll fall over. So I can do things, but I am limited because of that mobility. So some things I'm doing upper body training, I am doing like I always did. The difference is, and I want you to watch this clearly, anything I'm doing. Let me see if I can put this down to show you anything I'm doing. I used to say, keep your core tight. I have a whole different definition of it now. I have to pretend that this from here to here is one thing. I'm pretending that it's fused together. So anything I do, it moves as a unit. There was no arching my back anymore at all. This stays as a unit. Let me show you what I mean. If I'm doing a glute bridge watch. Stays as a unit. Everything, there's no dip down, everything stays as a unit. Always when I'm doing any exercises, my glutes are tight, my ribs are down, and it stays here, so there's no arching and swinging. It's just stable right here. I'm keeping that completely as one unit altogether. Now to fix the leg strength, let me show you what I'm doing. I'm going to put it down here so you can see I'm doing a lot of calf raises, okay. But I have to work on the right foot. So I'll do them first on the left, and then when I go to the right, I have to hold on to something. So I'm forcing it slowly. But as you can see, I'm completely wobbly. But I force it every day and I'll hold on to something if I need to. Forcing it. It does not move like this, but I have to force through it. So I'll force through it with a shoe on, and then I'll take a shoe off and force through it. Another thing I'm doing is I'm doing a lot of glute bridges because I'm trying to activate those glutes, but I'm keeping ribs down, keeping everything moving as a unit, really trying to activate those glutes. And as soon as I feel anything in my lower back, not doing it anymore, I'm taking that totally out. So Every day it's calf raises, it's doing glute bridges to strengthen those glutes, keeping everything as a unit. I'm also doing a lot of ankles, swinging an ankle. My surgeon said write the Alphabet with your foot, so I'm doing that. A lot of ankle circles, a lot of writing things. And then something I got from a physical therapist was towel grabs. Where I put a towel on the floor and using my toes, I'll pull it through me because I don't have use of all of my toes right now except for my big toe. So those are the things that I am doing. I'm also walking, but right now I'm walking maybe a mile and a half a day. As soon as I go past to the three miles a day, everything starts hurting again. And I'm not trying to push it. I'm doing just enough to retrain my leg and not enough to overdo it. Now, some of you saw that I did some chin ups and pull ups the other day and everyone was freaking out and saying, what are you doing? Well, it's fine because I'm taking my lower back out of the equation. I'm keeping it stable. I'm using my upper body that I can do. Swinging and kipping I would not do right now. So that's the type of thing that I'm doing and I hope that helps, helps you some. Oh, and then really important, I got a stand up desk. There's no more sitting. So see this right here? Stand up desk, just like this. That's a soup can holding up my monitor. Because the thing that people don't realize with stand up desk is you can get a stand up desk. But if you're keeping your head down to look, that's creating another problem in your neck. So you want something stand. So you're looking up. So you're here. So I'm working on not having any additional, any additional problems with that. So anyway, that was my story on what I did for my back, for my back rehab. What I'm continuing to do, I'm post surgery, not even three weeks right now. Again, I didn't have a microdiscectomy. I had a laser endoscopic spine surgery, which is, I feel a better procedure. If it's an option for you, it's between you and your surgeon. But because of the super quick recovery time and because it's so minimally invasive and did not go through my muscle or bone or anything. So that's what I wanted to share. Thanks, guys. Bye.