Jamey Tucker’s BlogSquat

It is a family tradition, raking the leaves in our front yard. This year our neighbor Daisy jumped in to help. All I can do is take pictures.

Thanks again to everybody who calls, e-mails and twitters. I haven’t had much to update lately as the doctors haven’t really told me anything new. I did see a spine specialist today who made me feel a lot better.

No, my back still hurts but he made me feel better by telling me my back should still hurt. It’s been 5 weeks tomorrow and I was beginning to think I needed to toughen up and stop whining about back pain. The spine doctor was surprised that I was getting around as well as I could and said I should give it another week before going back to work.

He’s sending me to get a different back brace that will give me a lot more support. Both orthopedic places I worked with today said they were going to get me in before Thanksgiving because I don’t need to go without one of these braces another day.

I’m still planning to go back to work Monday.

after a doctor’s appointment this a.m we stopped at Delaney’s school for her thanksgiving meal. Early this morning there was much discussion about whether she wanted to eat the turkey and dressing. She insisted she didn’t like turkey and said she wanted to take a sandwich instead.
When I sat down at the cafeteria table I watched as she took her sandwich out of her lunchbox.
A turkey sandwich.

Wow. That was the first thing I said, after the scream.

I couldn’t figure out where I was. Maybe an hour earlier I had brushed my teeth and gone to bed. Cameron was asleep. It was a little after 11.

Now I was laying somewhere in a great deal of pain. There were two or three guys looking down at me. They seemed to be in a hurry.

My back was making me scream.

“Wow, where am I?”

“We’re taking you to the hospital bud.”

“Why?”

“You’ve had a seizure”.

Wow. Did he say a seizure? Then my back reminded me of the pain.

It was a long 15 minute ride to the hospital.

The doctors explained that I had had a grand mal seizure, or at least that’s what they thought it was. We were fortunate that my in-laws had come to town earlier that day and my father-in-law could stay at home with the kids, who, by this time, were scared to death at what was happening to daddy.

Funny thing was, I was alert and talking by the time my wife and mother-in-law showed up in the emergency room. We talked and talked and talked. Other than my back, I had never felt better, or at least more normal. At 4 am they admitted me to a hospital room where I would stay two nights and find out that I was going to be all right.

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For the past nearly 4 weeks I’ve been out of commission. I can’t drive, can’t stand up for very long, can’t sit in a chair for very long, and can’t lift anything heavier than a big cup of coffee. I broke my L1 and T12 vertebrae which are side by side on my spine and basically hold my body up.

But I keep finding myself saying “Wow”. Cameron posted something about it on her Facebook page when she got back home that morning around 6. By the time she brought my laptop back to the hospital and I opened my page, I must have had 200 messages and notes from friends. Some from friends I haven’t seen or even heard from in 20 years.   Wow.

I can’t say enough good things about the folks I work for and with. I missed election night and the CMA awards and much of the November book. But my boss keeps telling me to come back only when I can work and not before my back heals. Wow.

And then last weekend, four of my co-workers came to the house and prepped our basement floor for the acid stain I was planning to put on it. We had talked about my basement project before the seizure and they knew how much I wanted to get it done. So after a busy week at work, they showed up Saturday morning and got the adhesive gunk up and then cleansed the concrete. Big Wow.

I go back to the doctor tomorow and I’m hoping he’ll give me the okay to get back to work. My back still aches after standing or sitting for very long but I hope I can be somewhat productive. It’s awfully boring sitting at home day after day after day after day.

A sleep study shows that I have severe sleep apnea so I’ve got a dandy little CPAP machine to keep me breathing at night. I haven’t gotten used to it yet but have been able to take an afternoon nap with it once.

Thanks for the good thoughts and prayers. I should be back on my feet soon.