With noone to speak to about my problems I turn to the "society".

Well I want to appologize in advance for bringing this personal matter to you all here, but I have no where else to turn. I also, appologize for bringing such dreadfull problems here in the season of what should be happiness and joy.

I have had a few years of feeling hopeless, helpless and uselessness. I am disabled, i hurt my back on March 23, 2002, working for our local trash collectors, recycling division. I lifted a heavy @$$ can of wet cardboard to dump in my garbage truck, after dumping out what seamed to be 200 gallons of water(in reality it was a 32 gallon garbage can). Well improper body mechanics and the rush to get out of the cold, i grabbed the can and twisted and "pop" there went my back! After about 20 minutes lying on the ground behind my truck i was finally able to get myself up and get back into the cab, I called dispatch and asked for help, only to get the response "we don't have anyone we can send to help you today", that was when I informed the dispatcher that I wasn't asking for help on my route, in fact i was asking for medical attention. Only to be told "drive yourself to the hospital", i replied with "it's your truck, and if I wreck it's your insurance!!". I was able to drive myself to the local hospital, which was only two blocks away. I went into the hospital, registered, waited what seemed to be a week before they told me I had a lumbar strain-sprain! When in reality I had just blew out two disks, the L4-L5 and L5-S1 disks.

To shorten the story by about 5 years, I tried every type of medical treatment they could throw at me, physical therapy, facet injection(those really hurt), physical therapy, chiropractic manipulation, steroid injections, physical therapy, steroid injections(useless), MRI(while being mildly closter phobic) this having done 7 to date, throw in a few x-rays-when i say a few, what i mean is i could probably recycle about a kilo of silver from the x-ray films i have here on hand, oh yeah,, did i mention physical therapy? I had my first sugery on October 12, 2005, the doctor went in and trimmed the disks away from my ciatic nerve on the left side in order to reduce the pain i was having in my left leg, hip, thigh, calf, ankle and foot. That surgery was successful-for two months!! While in that two months I thought i was fixed, i returned to full time employment as a certified auto mechanic, my wife and I signed the loan papers on our home, just to take a terrible turn for the worst in early december of that year!! Soo now I am unable to work again, and now I have a $783.00 house payment to pay. I am taken off work again by my doctor for approxinately 5 months, struggling every month to pay the bills, after giving my four kids what i think was a crapy Christmas that year!! I said screw it and went back to work in May of 2006, as a mechanic again, i have to admit the job I was able to get, i was making pretty good money. That is when my coin collecting really took off. I was able to buy 8 of the 2006 20th Anniversary Silver Eagle sets, I really wanted the three coin Gold set,, but wasn't doing that good. My wife also worked at the same place, it was a Large buy here pay here car lot, I'm not sure if it is national or not but Tony Stewart, the NASCAR driver was a spokesman for them, J.D. is in the name. I being a mecjanic and my wife working in the financing dept. we were doing good. Then on December 15, 2006, I just couldn't do it any more, that and wrecking a car into my $2700.00 toolbox, due to being so screwed up on the medication i had to take in order to be able to do my job. I was on a cocktail of narcotics everyday, just be able to get upp out of bed and go to work to do the back breaking job of being a mechanic, bending, lifting, crawling and all the othe fun BACK BREAKING tasks that are needed to fix cars, have you ever tried to lie on your back, up under the dash of a car trying to fix some microscopic piece, that you have to be a contorsionist to get to, while your back is resting on the door sill plate, as it grinds into the lumbar region? I am here to tell you, it is probably less painfull to run your arm through a wood chipper!! Back to December 15th, it was the last day I have been able to work, by that time i was walking with the use of a cane, wanting to cry every step i took, due to the extremes pain in my left leg, again, but this time it was way worse than before. My left calf was always in a charley horse, my left hip felt as if it was on fire with that burning pain you get when you are injured and that effected area is numb. Not to mention, the pain that radiated from the lumbar region of my back down through my sacroilliatic joint, through my left buttocks and acroos my left hip, through my thigh and down to my knee, where the pain seem to be amplified through my calf into my ankle, through the outer left side of my foot and out the two smallest toes on my left foot.

At this point i have tried to avoid any major surgery, the first was a less invasive surgery with a artheroscope(I hope I spelled that right)up through the top of my butt crack into my spine and up through the spinal column to trim those disks. Well i gave in and went for the full blown diskectomy with fixation of the L4-L5, L5-S1 disks and vetebrae. It took 16 months to get my surgery approved through our friends at the bureau of Workmans Compensation(BWC). My surgery took place on April 25, 2008. I now have a 8 inch scare on my back and about 10 ounces of titanium in my back, consisting of two rods, six screws and six spacers attatched to the L4, L5 and S1 vertebrae, half on either side of my spine. Here goes the physical therapy again, I was required to walk 1/4 mile, starting the next day, increasing the distance by 1/4 mile every week till i was able to walk a mile each day, along with therapy 3 times a week with this nice looking therapist, but her looks was the only nice thing about her, she really put me through the mill. I am not saying she was mean, but she was really stern about the exercises i had to do, that just mad me wish i was dead, REALLY, death would have felt better.

Now i am post surgery by a year and seven months, at first i started to feel better, but then i was entered into vocational rehab, after 3 months of that i had to bow out, due to the symptoms that lead me to get the surgery in the first place was coming back. I am now again on a cane, with all the pain in all the prior disclosed places but at higher levels. The typical pain scale is 10, i feel as if my pain is 13.5 on that scale, i take some of the strongest medication on the market now, four times a day i take a cocktail of about three narcotics, two different muscle relaxers, and due to my feelings of being a failure to my family, my feelings of worthlessness, and the feelings of just wanting this life to be over, i now have to take psychological medication, two different ones, they say they help with nerve pain(they dont). Now I feel pain, at the same time of being so loopy, I am afraid to even drive, the medications make me feel a little better, dont get me wrong, they do releive the pain enough to get up and move around, but never releive the pain enough to be pain free. Some of the side effects of the medicines are insomnia(it is 4:58 am, still no sleep), lightheadedness, irritability, itching all over, lack ov sexual drive, i mean i have a young beautiful, hot sexy wife, that i just dont seem to want anymore. What the HELL is wrong with me? I am not able to play with my kids anymore,