The only other thing of significance to note was when we flew past the Neuschwanstein Castle. After we had cleared the glider, we cancelled our IFR flight plan and transitioned to VFR. This allowed us to choose our own altitude and heading as we had planned on doing a fly by on the castle. We told the crew and they had their cameras out and I think we all got some pretty decent photos of one of the most famous and visually recognizable castles on the world. Soon enough, we were back at Giebelstadt.
I had an office in the hangar where I did my unit automation work. It was also used to store some unused desks. I needed to move one a few inches (it was an old 1950s era metal army desk and super heavy). I only needed to move it a few inches so I just walked up to it and tried to nudge it over a bit with my thighs. No bending, no twisting, no awkward movement, just a nudge with both thighs and the dreaded “pop” was heard with that little twinge in my lower back that I just knew would get worse. Unfortunately for me, I was right. For the first time, I had a spinal disc dislocate and no matter the therapy, the shots, the adjustment or the workout, I could not get the issue to resolve. Nothing was relieving the problem.
I was grounded and for the first time taking some pretty heavy pain medications just to function. Even then, taking drugs strong enough that I couldn’t drive, I wasn’t functioning very well. Every morning it was like a mini-test to see what the day was going to bring. If I could stand up, it was going to be a good day. A bad day usually consisted of my placing my left foot on the floor, trying to stand, and then collapsing into a spastic pile on the floor, overwhelmed by a blinding, unrelenting pain.
It is hard to explain a massive back spasm to anyone who hasn’t experienced one. If you have ever had a cramp in your calf, imagine that pain, magnified by a factor of ten, in your lower back. Unlike the calf, you have no way of stretching it out to relive the pain. Your vision goes white, maybe it seems like 100 strobe lights are going off all around you, and you collapse on the floor screaming because it feels like someone has just stabbed you in the back with a glowing red broadsword that was recently pulled out of a blacksmith’s forge. I decided it was time to do something about this.
The local hospital had an Orthopedics Clinic and the doctor I saw there was a reservist on active duty. His specialty was back surgery, but in the European Theatre all back surgery was done in Landstuhl at the Landstuhl Army Medical Center. The initial diagnosis was a Herniated Nucleus Pulposus (HNP). I was quickly given a referral to the Neurosurgery clinic there. Two weeks later, on a Monday morning, I met Dr. (Maj) Gary Flangas at the Neurosurgery clinic. Dr Flangas had worked as a neurosurgeon in Houston, Texas, for almost a decade before he decided to join the army and see the world. He was the head of neurosurgery in the European Theatre.
Doctor Flangas evaluated me, confirmed that I indeed had an HNP (L5-S1, the lowest disc in the back) and he determined I was indeed a surgery candidate. Next, we discussed my options. He could do the minimum necessary, a partial discectomy or we could elect to do a spinal fusion. A partial discectomy involved a small incision, taking out part of a facet on a vertebra, removing the part of the spinal disc that was pressing on a nerve, and hoping the remaining part of the disc supported the weight of my spine. Minimally invasive. Spinal fusion, they first harvest bone from the ilium (The part of your hipbone you can feel). Then they do a similar, but larger incision, remove the entire damage disc, and insert the harvested bone between then vertebra. This allows the vertebra to fuse together. Part of the discussion was that the discectomy was a good first choice and if needed go back and do a spinal fusion. If I elected for a fusion, then there were no more surgical options left if the problem was unresolved. I chose the discectomy as I wanted options.
My next surprise was to be scheduled for surgery within eleven days. Originally, I was going to be scheduled for that Thursday, four days later. But the doctor was already booked up that Thursday with three surgeries and we had to wait another week for him to have an available operating room. There were limited operating rooms for the amount of surgeries that could be done and Doctor Flangas only had the OR booked every Thursday morning for Neurosurgeries. The only other time he operated was during emergencies. I was kinda shocked that I was getting surgery so soon, and even with a week delay, I had to scramble to coordinate transportation to and from the hospital. My wife didn’t drive in Germany and I had to enlist my platoon leader’s wife as my driver.
I made the trip back to Landstuhl and the actual surgery was fairly uneventful (for me) as I was wheeled in for surgery at 0700 and I woke in the recovery room around 1130, I was slow to wake from the anesthesia and the nurse was continuously telling me to breathe, as my blood oxygen was dropping below 80 percent, causing an alarm to go off. When Dr. Flangas came to the recovery room that I learned my case was more difficult than he’d expected. I was scheduled for a forty-five-minute procedure and I was in the OR for well over two hours. He mentioned that the two cases behind me would be unhappy as they would have to wait another week.
I was back to my room a little past noon and the nurses had me walking the halls two hours later. It was a wonderful feeling. For the first time in ages I had no issues with back pain. I was so relieved and I thought that all my problems had been resolved. This was one of the happiest moments of my life. I was monitored for two days and all seemed to be good. My wife and Valia, (My Bosses Wife) and her daughter (Ariana) came to get me in their Ford Super-cab pickup for the drive home. I was tender but I managed the back seat. The trip home was only punctuated by a stop to resolve a rather nasty diaper blowout for Ariana. Five days after surgery, I woke up and couldn’t feel my left leg.
Fearing the worst, we called Dr. Flangas and I was given some steroids and told to stay in bed for seventy-two hours. They were figuring I had some swelling around the spinal cord and that it was causing the paralysis. I did get some feeling back and most of my motor function (I could walk fairly normally after the bedrest), but I could no longer lift up my toes and foot more than a couple inches. My dorsiflexors were not working on the left leg and most of the foot felt like it was asleep. As soon as I was able to move and walk again, I had a dye-contrast MRI and the results were inconclusive. Dr Flangas could see nothing that going back in would help and he hoped in time the issue would resolve. (It didn’t.)
I could have requested another surgery and a fusion might have resolved the issue. This was a quandary that I went over and over about. There was a chance the issue might resolve, there was a chance a fusion might help. There was also a chance that the fusion or any other surgery might make things worse. After the steroids and the MRI, I was out of pain and my back was pretty stable. I could walk normally and I really didn’t have major limitations aside from not being able to fly and I was being medically boarded anyway. With no clear indication that I would get a better result, I decided to wait it out.
The pain was gone and I was now permanently grounded. My career was over anyway as I had been awaiting my results from my second opportunity for promotion to Chief Warrant Officer 3 (CW3) and I was turned down again about the time I had surgery. In a way, the leg problems were beneficial as I could apply for a disability retirement instead of just being discharged. I had to apply for disability through Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington as they were the approval authority for Europe. The disability process went from the end of 1996 through the summer of 1997 and I was placed on the Temporary Disability Retired List (TDRL) effective 1 August 1997.
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