Deborah Asks Michelle King Robson To Advocate For Her Health

Michelle King Robson:
So Debbie, tell me what’s going on with you.

Deborah:
Well, I like to consider myself as a fairly healthy person and I had a sinus infection and was in bed and reached for my computer and I pulled my back out.

Michelle King Robson:
How long ago did you do that?

Deborah:
About a month ago, and I literally could not move. I was stuck in that kind of crouched forward position and could not move and every time I did move the pain would shoot up.

Michelle King Robson:
Where was it shooting up?

Deborah:
At my spine.

Michelle King Robson:
Okay, so all the way up?

Deborah:
All the way up.

Michelle King Robson:
Okay.

Deborah:
And it felt like, you know kind of that electrocuting shock – just dzdzdz … and it took about an hour before I could actually get myself to get up right and so I went to the doctor and they did do an MRI and he said it was from an injury that I probably had when I was younger, that was, yeah. . .

Michelle King Robson:
Interesting.

Deborah:
Completely flat, no fluid and…

Michelle King Robson:
So you didn’t rupture a disc.

Deborah:
Well, no, no, no there’s no fluid in the disc. So there’s no fluid and they are going the wrong way. They are like, so if they were supposed to be on top of each other, they are bulging the wrong way. So he suggested for immediate results do a spinal epidural.

Michelle King Robson:
Just to give you some relief.

Deborah:
Yeah, so I did that and then as you can see my lovely skin now, because of the cortisone, I look like I am 16 with the acne.

Michelle King Robson:
Which means you are allergic to it. You are having some kind of reaction to it. Are there any other side effects besides just what’s happening with your skin?

Deborah:
No, other than that I think it was fine but it’s just temporary and I think eventually you know, there’s two options – I can either strengthen my core enough to where it will support the back problem or do the surgery and that’s kind of where I am now.

Michelle King Robson:
But have you, you have been exercising; clearly, I mean you are in great shape.

Deborah:
Yeah, well I do. I do Pilates but I hadn’t been able to do it because I couldn’t move.

Michelle King Robson:
But your core really has been strengthened though, right?

Deborah:
It had been but I hadn’t been doing it for a couple of months because I was busy. So that’s sort of says why you need to…

Michelle King Robson:
Yes, that’s why EmpowHER is here to tell you to advocate for yourself and take care of yourself and for everybody else, which is what we…

Deborah:
. . . which is what we do.

Michelle King Robson:
. . . which is what we don’t do is take care…

Deborah:
And we take care of everybody else, yeah.

Michelle King Robson:
Exactly. I know you have a daughter and…

Deborah:
Yeah, I have three kids.

Michelle King Robson:
You have three so you’ve got a busy life.

Deborah:
Yeah, and then I work full time.

Michelle King Robson:
So you need to get, what disc is it?

Deborah:
You know, it’s not the lower ones and I can’t remember but it was high and he said that was a little…

Michelle King Robson:
2, 3, 4, 5…

Deborah:
It was up higher.

Michelle King Robson:
Up higher than that? So show me where it is. So it’s right here, okay.

Deborah:
It was like right in there. So the last injections I did, which was last, like a week ago they did a cortisone and they did like they pinpointed areas where they did just injections to try to release the spasms.

Michelle King Robson:
So do you have the report from the doctor after you had the MRI.

Deborah:
I can, yes I can.

Michelle King Robson:
So one of the things that I want you to start doing is go get all the data behind all this so we can look at it because what ‘d really like to do is have somebody else look at it for you and there’s a great, great, great person in Arizona. It’s Barros Nuerological, I don’t know if you are familiar with it or not but they are one of the best in the world and they have some of the best doctors and I’d just love to kind of send it off to him and let him take a peek at it and tell you what they think and just give that second opinion before you do anything else and see if you can avoid doing the surgery.

Deborah:
Yea, I would love to avoid doing the surgery definitely.

Michelle King Robson:
Yeah, you know, because you’re so fit and so healthy and everything else, if we can just get, if we can think out how to address that. There’s also another doctor who specializes in backs and he is up in northern California. He is another one that I would love for you to go see because all he does is rehab. It’s not, you know, he may say okay, you can have… I don’t want to have any more injections or if you have, if he looks at your x-rays, all he needs to see is x-ray and he actually develops some of the devices that are now used for backs, he and his brother, they’re amazing; they were on the cover of ‘Time’ magazine. I actually took my husband there because my husband had a bulging disc, had an operation, had a second operation and ended up with a staph infection, and he was down for almost a year.

So he is great at actually telling you if you should have surgery, because he is not a surgeon, which is really a good thing where you can get somebody outside the box, and he can also tell you what you can do to strengthen, what exercises you can do that will work for you, more than just the core but, you know, before you get out of bed here is what I want you to do, here is what I want you to do when you get in bed at night, here is how I want you to sit, here is the chair that you need and here is all the exercise regimen that I want you to try and here is the physical therapist in your area that I want you to see.

And since he knows everybody, you know, that, I mean I would do anything to avoid having that surgery as I know you don’t want to and then we got to figure out what we do to take care of your skin. That’s a quick, that’s not a…

Deborah:
And that’s, you know, I took my daughter to soccer yesterday and one of the moms is my dermatologist and she just said, “What the heck happened?” And she said, “Are you on…,” she said, “Are you on steroids?” And I said I just had the steroid injections in my back and sure enough that’s what…

Michelle King Robson:
After having a complete hysterectomy my skin was so dry and it was breaking out all the time and I didn’t know what to do. I mean that I was for seven years I looked for somebody to help me and I finally found him.

Deborah:
I want his number, definitely.

Michelle King Robson:
He definitely will; I’ll hook you up with all of them and then we’ll go from there but I want you to feel well.

Deborah:
Thank you.

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• Bones & Joints