Last night the vision came to me that I am like one of my favorite paintings of all time.
I literally am a porcelain doll wrapped in cellophane.
Why? Because I feel delicate, like I easily break, and I feel like I am wrapped up and kept separate from being fully part of the world and doing the things I need and want to do (like biking, traveling, and being at top form at my new job).
This is a devastating place to be after a year of absolute perfection pain-free bliss. I had come so far. I had ‘graduated’ from PT! And in an instant everything I fought so hard for was gone and I slid back into the pain cave ~ exactly where I never wanted to be again.
Maybe I was naive in thinking my back problems were over. Maybe I should not have listened to my medical team who said I could go back to regular activities ~ like increasing my strength training. Maybe I should not have gone back to my cycling coach who is not specifically trained in working with spinal issues.
But regardless here I am. Stiff. Steroid injection #4 in my back. Wrestling with my mental health because I am having to deal with this ongoing situation and the toll it is taking on my body. Not feeling optimistic for my future after floating on a cloud of optimism for a year. Not biking. Only trying to put out the fire and heal.
So what happened?
I have not even gotten to writing about the first surgery and the subsequent good stuff in my stories. I had it all planned out that I was going to tell you all the things I tried pre-surgery and how the pain just got worse, how my surgery went and what was done, the recovery process, and the bliss of feeling healed and pain free again.
This picture of me was from my one year Surgiversary just a few months ago. I was so elated to be feeling good, on my bike, one year after surgery.
But then, the pain returned in full force one month later and here I am with pre-surgery pain levels, again.
I experienced nearly a year to the day, a pain-free, blissful, athletic life. I was rebuilding my strength. I was rebuilding my fitness on the gravel bike. I was myself again in almost every way (the mental health recovery has been the hardest part, that is another story in itself).
On June 25th I ‘graduated’ from PT (after a year of post-surgery PT, plus all the pre-surgery PT the year before surgery) and was sent out into the world to continue to safely build my strength. My PT and I had a plan how to move forward, safely. I decided to work with my cycling coach again, who teaches the strength classes I started attending in 2020. I had my PT provide clear next step instructions to my coach, which were:
I then met with my cycling coach to get started on what I hoped to be a great strength building strategy going forward, but instead our assessment triggered an increasingly worse situation in my body that I now know was much worse than I thought. It is hard not to regret the assessment because it is the moment everything got worse. But what I understand from my PT is that my body SHOULD have been able to handle it and that I am unfortunately a rare case with a disc that is not performing as expected. My PT termed my disc like a bag of marbles ~ some marbles may have been slowly falling out of the bag, and at the assessment the bottom of the bag broke open and they all fell out.
In retrospect, I should have immediately contacted my surgical team. But instead I muddled through the pain thinking I could work through it. After a month and a half of that not working, I went back to my PT. She did not think it was as severe an issue as it ended up being. We both hoped working through the issue would calm down the ‘flare’. It did not.
The pain got worse and worse until I was back at what I had never hoped to be at again ~ what I call Level 20 Pain. The most miserable pain that causes sleepless nights that start to drive you out of your mind. And the depression of how that feels following quickly along. Here I was again, right where I never wanted to be again.
I finally called my surgical team. We tried Celebrex for the pain, no relief. We tried Prednisone for the pain, no relief. Begrudgingly I returned to Gabapentin. I got more relief so I could function, but it was never going to be the solution.
On August 29th I was once again in an MRI machine. On August 31 I was back at TRIA yet again ~ this time meeting with my surgeon’s PA. And when she pulled up the MRI images I saw validation of the level 20 pain (at least it was not just pain in my brain), but I was devastated with what the PA said ~ my disc had reherniated. The tears quickly followed. HOW did I end up here again? How?
Leaving the appointment, I did not just cry, I bawled the entire drive home.
The next step, another steroid injection in my back (my 4th, 3 of which did not work in the past). It did not work.
On September 30, 2026 I met with my surgeon and it was confirmed. I would need surgery again, and yes he agreed with me, this time the herniation was worse (I could not see my nerves at all in the image, only the disk).
For someone who has been through level 20 pain, and had a year of complete blissful relief and normalcy, finding myself back here again, and worse, is completely devastating.
I asked my surgeon why when he said I would not be back at my 6 week post-op, I was back. He said there is a 20% chance or reherniation. I asked if it was the assessment session that caused the reherniation, he said possibly, but that with discs you never know what might cause the herniation ~ it could be something as simple as picking up a pencil. All that to say, he had hoped the first surgery WOULD solve the problem and he would not see me back again, but no one has a crystal ball. Certainly I didn’t.
Someone said to me after I told them I had to have a second surgery, ‘you aren’t going back to the same surgeon are you?!’. The answer is yes. The reherniation is not the fault of my surgeon, he did everything he could the first time to get me in a position to avoid this situation. It is not a case of having the wrong surgeon, it is the case of having a bad disc. But yes surely there are people who have bad back surgeries and the wrong surgeon, and of course that entered my mind ~ was that why I was here again? But I know that is not the case, that is just the disappointment of being here again and having to go through another surgery and another long, long, long recovery ~ again. For me that is going to be the hardest part, but not quite as hard as being in agonizing pain.
And so here I go again…
