Chronic pain takes a toll on all of the relationships in your life, as you find yourself unwilling or unable to participate in activities that you used to enjoy. While sometimes this can be easy to explain to people, in other cases, it’s not so simple. As Darrel Lewis explains, “a kid doesn’t understand that dad can’t do these things with you anymore.”
Suffering from chronic sciatic nerve pain that caused numbness in his foot, Darrel couldn’t do anything that involved walking or running — and that included practicing soccer and football in the backyard with his young son. “He’s also involved with the Cub Scouts, and I was not able to go on the hikes,” Darrel recalls. An adult can understand, but how do you explain an injury that’s not clearly visible to a child?
Eventually, Darrel channeled his frustration into researching what he could do to relieve his pain. “I was to a point where I thought, I have nothing to lose, so let’s give it a shot,” he remembers. “And after researching and such, I thought ‘let’s do it.'” Darrel came to the Spine Institute Northwest and had a minimally invasive spine surgery with Dr. Kamson. “He’s very good at explaining what’s going on with your body and what to expect,” Darrel says.
After his procedure, Darrel’s pain actually increased somewhat, causing him concern. “But as the weeks progressed, I could feel it just continually move on down the butt, disappear there, on down the leg, disappear there, and it just worked its way completely down out of my body, and it’s pretty incredible.” With “just a tiny little incision in the back,” Darrel’s numbness was “almost completely gone” and his pain was dramatically reduced. Best of all, he’s able to do all of the activities with his family that he used to miss out on.
Darrel says that he highly recommends that people suffering from chronic pain check out the Spine Institute Northwest. “They worked miracles on what was wrong with my back, and the incision in the back is so small that you’re going to be surprised that they did so much work in such a small area. So don’t even think about it,” Darrel says. “Just head on down!”
Listen to more of Darrel’s story, in his own words: