My first post lets start with some background......

Here goes nothing....
1st post a little back story!

So I thought I would start with a little background. My name is Sara and I am a 35 year old single Canadian girl. This story starts a few years back, August 2007 to be exact. I was 32 years old working downtown Toronto, busy, tired but happy. I had just moved into my first condo 2 months prior after a 3 year wait and several delays so as far as I was concerned life was good.

The one issue I did have was my back. I had been complaining about my back ache for the past 2 years. Fortunately I have a very good family doctor who every 6 months would send me for tests even though they all came back normal, nothing was wrong with my back. I saw chiropractors regularly and they said my back pain was caused by a knee injury that happened a few years before and because I favored the one knee my hips shifted causing the back ache. Sounds very plausible to me and made total sense, so I kept going for treatment, but every 6 months or so the pain would worsen and back to my family doctor (Dr. Casey) I went. And the cycle would start again, x ray/ct scan, the results come back fine, go to a chiropractor, get some treatment (which on side note costs a lot of money since the government no longer pays for this ) etc. So imagine my surprise when in Aug 2007 Dr. Casey says I got the CT Scan results looks like they found a slipped disc and a possible crack in another disc. Now don't get me wrong I prefer to be healthy but at that moment the results made me very happy because it meant I wasn't crazy after 2 plus years of increasing pain and all the tests coming back normal you really begin to question your sanity. So I was happy that there was something wrong and we now knew what it was and could fix it. Dr. Casey said he didn't think that there was anything a surgeon could do and that I probably just need some physiotherapy but to be safe he would refer me.

I lucked out again because at the time of the referral a new back surgeon had just moved into the area and was in need of patients. So I went to my appointment and met my surgeon, Dr. Moammer. We introduced ourselves and I explained what had been happening and then gave him a copy of my xrays and CT scans. He left the room and went to check the scans himself. When he return like the song says he "dropped a bomb on me....baby". He told me I was born with something called PARS Defect. This causes the vertebrae not to form properly or in some cases not at all. In my case I was missing a vertebrae and the other 2 were not properly formed. This defect then causes Spondylolisthesis a degenerative disc disease. He kept asking if I had pain as a child I said I never had a back ache until 2 years prior. I played sports never a concern. The doctor explained that normally this is caught as a child due to the pain involved and corrected immediately and the child grows and the spine is corrected. In my case, which is very rare I had no symptoms until I was 32 which is great I had no pain for 32 years on the downside the disease had more time to run it's course. Normally this is caught at stage 0-1 unfortunately I was at stage 2-3. Concerned with what these stages meant I asked and which time he said that it meant the next step was paralysis. He advised me that I needed a major operation and would have to have my back reconstructed, this would involve adding a rod down my back and then screws down at each vertebrae. The discs that were now bulging had to be removed and were replaced with plastic discs. A cadaver provided me with the bones for my bone graphs and when all this was done it was all fused together. The surgery was long, lasting over 6 hours the only hitch being that somehow between my pre-surgery MRI and my surgery my back had broken in two. It was a miracle I wasn't paralysed, all if would have taken was sneeze or wrong move and Sara would be getting a different set of wheels. I work up in recovery with pain that I could never appropriately describe but the morphine pump helped take the edge off a little.

Fast forward 3 years later and here I am. So hows life you ask? well I have more pain after the surgery then I ever did before. I am still not working, at least before the surgery I worked regularly. 6 months my back worsened, and before I took my leave I had accepted the position as Manager of Internal Control for Rogers Communications. I have worked for the company since 2000 and loved my work. Now like everyone else I had bad days, I had many many stressed days but overall its a great company, I work with great people and this job had me creating an auditing process to be used by the department to audit our call centres for internal control on issues ranging from process compliance to fraud so I enjoyed the job. Now I am only able to walk around with a cane for short distances and use my walker for longer ventures. Pain continues to be an on going issue and I spend most of my time in bed. For the first 2 years my back didn't heal well and the bones were not healing at all so my doctor believes that because the bone took so long to start healing that it all became inflamed and like that disc years prior when things get inflamed they no longer fit into where they belong so he believes this combined with all the scar tissue on all the muscle layers he cut through are the cause of my pain. Unfortunately if this is the case that means I wont get much better and pain will continue as is. So what does this all mean exactly? well it means that at 35 I may be on permanent disability. Not able to drive any longer (haven't driven since the surgery) and looking for some new purpose in life. Now I have chosen not to believe this and have pushed for some other treatments in hopes of getting better, stronger and returning to work. So we are going to try laser therapy to see if that helps that is if my insurance company pays for the treatment. This may be a concern because the insurance company has recently stopped paying me saying my case is closed so I am currently appealing this, but those big bad insurance companies know that most of us regular folk can't live too long without a cheque coming in ... after all mortgages and bills still need to be paid.

As if this wasn't enough the other issue that I need to deal with is the vicsious cycle of weight gain. Since being off for my surgery I have gained roughly 70 lbs....that's the size of a model almost... or nicole richie during those skinny skinny years (who can forget that sagging bikini) ...but back to my story so the first year I spent in a hospital bed and the other 2 years I have spent going to physio, doctors, taking my dog out (when I can), going out occasionally for a movie or having a friend over, the rest of the time I am in bed sleeping or watching TV. This means more weight, more weight means more pain more pain means more time in bed, and time in bed means more weight... and the cycle continues. Now I am not an idiot I know that losing weight is all about calorie intake and calories burned ... but when your in bed with nothing to do it becomes harder, adding to this I was forced to quit smoking a year ago since my back was not healing and they believe that it was caused by the smoking (shitty part is they were right as the bones have started to heal since I quit) which means I am bored and still craving a cigarette and so I eat more crap...

So my question is what do I do now? I need to find a hobby or something I can do from home? I still have hope that with some weight loss more physiotherapy and some laser treatment or some other crazy treatment I will get better and return to my old life and my old job but if the doctor is right and things continue as they are I can't retire at 35? not like this, being in bed all day so that's why my question is what do I do? Both my best friend and brother said write a book, but the fact is that I'm not a very good writer (although since everyone and there mother seems to be writing a book these days that may not be as important as it use to be) which leads me onto a little rant. Do you remember the days when Models were on the cover of magazines, actors were in movies and television shows, singers and musicians played music (and were able to play live without lipsynching or background tracks or whatever else they use today) and authors wrote books and politicians ran for office. Those days are OVER now you have to be able to act,sing, dance, model, write a book, design a clothing line, create a perfume and adopt a baby. I mean really why? I mean really stick to what your good at. Why do singers say well i'm not really recording anything because I want to concentrate on acting? or actors I'm not taking any movie roles because I want to concentrate on my music... come on did we not learn anything from Eddie Murphy and his super single My girl wants to party all the time party all the time party all the time!!! Sorry had to get that off my chest, besides the fact that I'm not much of a writer I have no topic that I know enough about or care enough about to write a book. I can't see the New York Times Best Seller list adding a book about the ins and outs of Daytime Television. I get where they were coming from its something I can do from home at my own pace and its more to keep me busy then to make money but its tough. People say well that Julie and Julia movie that girl made a goal to cook her way through Julia Child's Book, which is a great idea but there is two problems, one I can barely cook, most of my food says remove from package, heat in microwave/oven/stove (you get the point) and second is if I cook my way through the book it also means I eat my way through the cook book and since I can't do a lot of excercise and would probably be more weight which would be very counter productive. My other friend is getting into scrap booking which I think is awesome, but just not for me I can appreciate it but I am just not that creative. Not this is not one of these I am secretly Martha Stewart and just want the pity cause I have enough pity I don't need it's true I'm such not a creative person in that sense of the word. I took a photography class in University and I loved it, I loved the dark room, the process, everything but at the end of the day I barely got a C in that class and that was with my room mate who studied Art helped me because it wasn't my process it was really just how he could look through the lense and he could imagine or see what was beautiful I think thats whats important to have for visually creative people ... I don't have that. So the questions still remains what do I do now?

I will try to keep updating this so that I can keep everyone updated. I know sometimes its hard to know whats going on with me and what I am doing .... so I will update you with whats going on with me ... and of course provide any daytime television updates I feel need to be shared...LOL