Shannon G. knew exactly what the ten on a pain scale felt like. It felt like the most painful moments of a heart attack, during surgery, when even a morphine drip and a localized anesthetic couldn’t stifle the pain.
The heart attack happened back in 2005, and it wasn’t so bad at first. Early that Saturday morning, there was only some mild discomfort. But after half an hour, Shannon was getting concerned. He knew the signs of a heart attack, and while he was hardly a health alarmist, he figured it was worth a trip to the hospital, just to be safe. So, he and his wife piled into the car and made their way to the emergency room. That was when the discomfort switched over to full-blown pain.
At the hospital, Shannon didn’t let the pain mask his sunny side, which might explain why the hospital staff members didn’t seem too concerned at first. While his wife parked the car, Shannon dutifully started in on the stack of forms the nurse gave him. When his wife returned from the parking lot and saw him wasting time on paperwork, she marched up to the nurse and insisted they see her husband right away.
If the medical staff had any doubts about Shannon’s health or condition, those doubts were put to rest when he was hooked up to an EKG. Forty minutes later, he was in surgery.
Although he was getting the maximum allowable dose of morphine, the pain kept him lucid. He was aware of the surgeon cutting into his leg and threading the catheter through his arteries and towards his heart. It was only when the blocked artery was cleared and the heart attack was over that Shannon relaxed and let the meds numb him. “Morphine is terrific,” he reflects.
Compared to a heart attack, the low back pain Shannon suffered from time to time was a mild annoyance. Sure, it meant the occasional missed day from work, and some prescription painkillers while he recovered. But it could be worse.
Then, in 2017, his back troubles took a turn in the wrong direction. Shannon worked for a company that contracted out for IT work. One of his assignments involved moving computers and servers from one site to another. It wasn’t a big job, comparatively speaking. There were maybe ten computers and a single server rack with four servers. Still, some of the components were heavy. The back-up batteries for the servers – necessary in case of a power outage – easily weighted fifty pounds apiece. On that second day, Shannon’s back hurt, but it was nothing out of the ordinary. He finished the job, went home, and went to bed.
The next day, he was getting out of bed to get ready for work when he was hit with an extraordinary pain in his left leg. It was like he had stepped on a lightning rod. The current curved from his back through his left hip and reached down through his leg and ankle. “It was just the most painful thing I’ve ever felt,” Shannon said. “It was so painful I couldn’t speak. All you can do in moments like that is hang on for dear life.”
He called in sick to work. Then he immediately called his doctor.
He had a few pain pills left over from a previous episode of back pain. He took enough to get him out the door and into his doctor’s office. Once there, his doctor referred him to a pain management specialist.
The referral wasn’t of much immediate help, since the specialist didn’t have an open appointment for another two weeks. Shannon made an appointment anyway, but didn’t expect to keep it. Though the pain was more intense than any previous incident, he was confident it would vanish of its own accord in a few days, just like it usually did. He got a refill of pain meds, and prepared to wait it out.
Two weeks later, Shannon was in the pain management doctor’s office, in as much pain as ever. Though the incredible intensity of the lightning bolt came and went, he was always in some kind of intense pain. When the lightning faded it still felt like there was a red-hot livewire threaded through his leg. At other times, he would feel the pressure build inside his leg, as if there was a creature inside him that was trying to get out.
Again and again, the lightning struck, for no reason that Shannon could tell. He might be sitting perfectly still, or standing in relative comfort, and suddenly it would rip through him again. Every waking moment was pain, and greater pain. When the pain ebbed, there was still the expectation of pain renewed.
Lying down seemed to help. Shannon would have a few good minutes in the morning before he stepped out of bed. But as soon as his feet hit the floor the pain would come rushing back. He took to keeping a glass of water and a hydrocodone on his nightstand so he could prepare himself before rising.
For another person at another time, it would have been tempting to give up and stay in bed. But that wasn’t in the cards for Shannon. About a month and a half before the first lightning bolt hit, he’d committed to buying a new company in a new industry. He knew how to manage the business side – payroll, bookkeeping, customer service, and so forth – but automotive equipment was a far cry from IT, and there was a learning curve. There were seven employees on the payroll already, plus Shannon’s business partner. Knowing that these workers’ paychecks depended on the business kept Shannon going.
The pain management doctor had no trouble diagnosing sciatica, but fixing it was another story. Shannon signed up for a course of epidural injections. The first shot gave some relief, but it faded after a measly twenty-four hours. He got a second and third injection, which did nothing at all.
The clinic’s policies mandated a three-month waiting period between courses of injections. Shannon kept signing up for another round whenever he was due, and got twelve shots over the course of a year. None of the subsequent injections did much at all.
To keep functioning day to day, Shannon relied on his only working option – hydrocodone. It was a band-aid, he knew. It didn’t stop the pain, but the pills made getting through the day bearable.
All this time, Shannon held out hope that a cure was right around the corner. He was sure he’d find something that worked, or the pain would go away on its own. But time pressed on and each day was as torturous as the last. The pain and the meds had affected his memory. He wasn’t learning his new business as quickly as he expected. He leaned on his business partner far more than either one of them had planned.
In addition to the epidural injections, Shannon was exploring other treatment options. He visited his chiropractor and a physical therapist, but neither one made much difference. He experimented with various supplements, salves, and vitamins. He stopped lifting heavy things. None of these experiments had an obvious or immediate impact. Still, he couldn’t help but try.
After a year, Shannon had to admit that his efforts so far weren’t working. He went back to his primary care doctor, and tried a new strategy – honesty.
Shannon was starting to realize his intrinsic sense of optimism often kept others from realizing the extent of his problems. “When someone asks me how I’m feeling, I say ‘Great!’ or ‘Wonderful!’ and that’s how I feel most of the time.” Shannon said. “Even if I’m having intense pain, I don’t say, ‘I’m horrible.’ What I realized is, that hides how much [the pain] affects my life…Being an optimist, I wasn’t really facing how bad it was. It affected every bit of my life.”
When he admitted to his primary care doctor that everything was not alright, he was also admitting it to himself. It wasn’t easy, but he realized he might never get the help he needed if he wasn’t upfront about needing help. “What I realized is, doctors only go off of what you tell them. If you tell them everything is hunky-dory, they’re never going to address the problem.”
He told his doctor he was ready to explore surgery. He was ready to explore anything, really, that might make the pain go away. His primary referred him to a surgeon, and Shannon felt a fresh surge of hope.
He met with the physician’s assistant for the surgeon. Because Shannon had a pacemaker, he couldn’t get an MRI, and the surgeon didn’t think that a CT scan would be of much help, so the PA reviewed his X-rays.
When asked about his pain level, Shannon, in typical optimist fashion, answered six. Of course, that six was what remained after taking three to five oxycontin or hydrocodone pills a day. And that six was after Shannon had spent more than a year learning to live with the constant discomfort.
The surgeon’s office concluded that Shannon was not a candidate for surgery, and dismissed him without suggesting an alternative. Shannon had come to the end of the line, and he didn’t know what he was going to do. It was at that point that Shannon felt himself slipping into a depression. He didn’t want to take painkillers every day, nor did he want to live in constant pain. He had tried everything he could think of, and it hadn’t helped. Even with his sunny disposition, Shannon couldn’t see any good options.
“I was at a point where I literally thought there was no hope. I was two years in, in constant pain every single day, and there was no relief. I used to dream about just dying, honestly. I would dream about dying because there would be no pain. There were times I’d daydream about that. For an optimistic guy, I was pretty low. I was at the end of my rope, and then it began to get better.”
Indeed, after two years of sciatica, the pain began to dissipate. In early 2019, Shannon began to notice a turn for the better. A few months later, he was feeling well enough to start weening himself off the painkillers.
There were still more trials ahead of him, though. After two years of taking powerful opioids daily, Shannon was addicted to oxycontin. But with his doctor’s help, he was able to gradually reduce the dosage. He started cutting his pills in half, and then reducing the halves.
Today, Shannon is off painkillers completely, and doesn’t consider himself to be suffering from sciatica. He isn’t completely sure what his recovery is due to – the vitamins? The lack of heavy lifting? Dietary changes? The healing balm of time? Whatever it was, he has a new appreciation for pain-free living.
In the end, Shannon’s optimism was proven right, and he urges others in the midst of chronic pain to keep looking for ways to heal themselves. While he never tried acupuncture himself, he had a friend who experienced sciatica and reported that it helped. He considers dietary changes worth exploring, especially since they might improve other health conditions as well as sciatica.
After his sciatica ordeal, Shannon also has a new attitude toward healthcare. He’s no longer content to present any new health problems to his doctor and swallow whatever pill she prescribes. Instead, he’s in the driver’s seat, and decisions about his health are made with his doctor, not by his doctor.
“My doctor is a tool in my toolbox, but not the only tool,” Shannon said. “It’s up to me go and research all the possibilities, and ask her about things to try. Too many people don’t come with suggestions. You need to bring these things to your doctor, and ask questions. Once you start doing that – once I started doing that – I had a much better relationship with my doctor.”
Indeed, Shannon has been exploring other ways to improve his health. After researching different diets, he recently adopted the keto diet and has lost about seventy pounds. After being overweight for at least thirty years, this represented a new era of autonomy and self-help.
As a small business owner in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic, Shannon’s optimism is still being tested today. His company is still open for business, but business has declined by about 80% due to the recent emergency restrictions. Even so, Shannon has avoided laying off any of his employees or cutting hours. Rather than getting caught in a spiral of anxiety, Shannon is amazed at how quickly scientists and health care workers are learning about the coronavirus, and is confident that things will turn around soon.
Asked how he manages in the face of such bad news and uncertainty, Shannon has a simple answer. “You just keep on going.”
