surgery was a success!!!
 

you guys(and gals) may or may not of known that I've been battling debilitating chronic pain now for 3years which I'll give cliff notes on;) I'm 27 now btw..

I had screwed my back up sea clamming herniating L4-L5 w/ 3/4 spinal cord compression and had bulging discs from L4-L1. did PT and took a year off from offshore fishing just collected oysters on the flats. tried going back fishing(scalloping) but after just a couple months was shot, back to the flats. finally pulled the trigger on back surgery in may of last year and took another 4mos off. went back scalloping for another 6mos and was shot again. took a job delivering seafood to fultons fish market in nyc and to markets in boston as well as managing an oyster grant. then in june I herniated another disc @ L3-L4 but they advised against another back surgery.

now this whole time I suspected something was going on with my hip and my nerve pain in my left leg never subsided. FINALLY I found a specialist who figured out what was going on. turns out I had some thing called a CAM impingement in my hip. the surgery was risky as they would have to put my leg in traction and pull it out of the socket to shave the top of my femur from an egg shape(why allot of men eventually need hip replacements) into a spherical ball. this could actually break my leg or ankle or even tear my ligaments in my knee, and theres always the risk that I could break the top of my femur off post op. It took me a couple months to make up my mind but I finally pulled the trigger on that surgery as well.

SO I had the surgery on the 10th and from the moment I woke up -WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!:) :) :) I went from 90mg of oxycodone a day which used to bring me down to a 7 pain wise with the help of 3200mg of neurotin/day (nerve pain number) and 2400mg/day of ibprofen, 50mg of cymbalta and muscle relaxers. I'm psyched to report that I've only been taking 20mg of oxy a day, 1600mg neurotin, 0mg ibprofen as I've been taking celebrex(it some how keeps bone growth from forming in my soft tissue), 50mg of cymbalta and have only been taking the muscle relaxers when I wake up stiff in the middle of the night. the difference in pain is amazing! I've got so much more energy, I'm back to my smiley old self and every one has said how much better I look! yay! I've got a 4mos recovery ahead of me and after that I can't wait to turn some wrenches on my car, go fishing but only OCCASIONALLY:( it bums me out but I need to switch careers so I plan on going back to school.

I'm just so happy I'd had to share. I've been out of the car scene this whole time with my camaro parked in my garage collecting dust. I need to finish a couple things like properly spec'ing new PR's(AI sent me a set w/o 1st sending me a length checker tool and seeing what the proper length was 1st for some reason) and I need to upgrade to ARP bolts on the top end and plan on getting a tad more work done on my heads before buttoning it back up. I was in no shape to even think about doing any of that before and don't know of a good LT1 mechanic that I trusted so I let it sit. can't WAIT to drive it next spring and bring it to some meets to meet some of you guys:gears:

Hope you have a fast recovery!

Good to hear your doing better, it sucks that you cant be out on the ocean fishing again. I grew up on the cape and used to go deep sea fishing with my old man all the time, nothing like the open ocean.

sounds like a case of pussyitis to me.

not sure if your joking or not but fuck no. I've broken my tibula & fibula, ankle, both elbows, femur, skull, both wrists, broke a hand out fishing and never got it fixed, just taped it up and kept shucking..got a lump thats never going away on it.. and had a cerebral hemorrhage when I was 18 which is the most painful thing a human can experience. not a fan of pain meds so besides for in ambulances and post op in hospitals I never took them til i fucked my back and even then I tried every anti inflamatory out there but kept ending up w/ blood commin out both ends. this was my 13th surgery btw. ever hurt so much that even w/ pain meds you couldn't even sit up in bed? thought not. you couldnt even handle the work I used to do out fishing im sure. I've lost count how many people I've seen burn out in 7yrs of fishing, bet you couldnt even stand up for 43hrs straight(my longest trip) never mind get only 4hrs of sleep and do it all over again. or get the grip from shucking where your wrist swells up, feels broken and grinds like a mofo and still out shuck every one else on board.
course if you were jokin sorry for being an ass tony;)

for sure, parting ways with fishing was harder than parting ways with any girl I've ever been with. once it gets in you it hard to get it out of you

Hope everything works out for you. You've gone through a lot of stuff for being so young. Good luck with eveything.

Hope your feeling better man!

Damn I blew out my back and was down for a couple weeks. I can only imagine what you are going threw

Wow, you have been through the wringer.

I'm glad to hear that you're recovering and doing better though!!!