we're full-time rvers and one of us needed surgery don't let this nightmare happen to you
welcome to the channel i'm liz and i'm paul and these are exciting times to push past fear build
confidence and live amazing well we are so ready to live amazing and we're close we're almost there
we've missed gosh we've we missed two whole weeks talking to you all and it feels so good to be back
yeah yeah and and you've missed a month basically i mean you've been flat on your back for a month
yeah if you haven't seen them we did a couple videos talking about when my back went out and we
learned a lot and this actually it actually could happen to you even if you're rving not full-time
but are being for a long trip so we want to kind of go into what happened how it led to surgery
the mistakes that we made we're also going to talk about what i did and didn't do in the
rv that led to the back problems so that you can avoid the same fate hopefully like i said
mistakes were made and and in retrospect i can clearly see what we should have done so i want to
say if you've had sciatica i my heart goes out to you because what i had was sciatica pain so it was
agony excruciating pain all the time that nothing would take away and it got to the point where i
would just lay in bed crying so it was it was really rough and i do feel like i've just come
out of some trauma i've had sciatica in the past but minor compared to what you had i mean mine was
just discomfort for a few days and then it passed yours was just excruciating pain for four weeks
so some of the mistakes we made were we kept on moving you know we have been on the road for
three years as full-time rvers and we were headed to the beaches in florida and we had some mail
waiting for us and we also were excited about hitting the beaches and this was early october
and we we just didn't stop and i think if we could do it all over again
we would have been like if liz is flat on her back we need to not be traveling at all
because we were realizing after going to four ers i really needed a doctor i really needed
to get a specialist yeah a specialist to get under doctor's care and also get an mri to know exactly
what was going on i never saw the um cat scan i just knew i had a herniated disc but i didn't
really know the details right every doctor we talked to said yeah these things will 70 of these
self-correct and and surgery is not necessary yeah so we kept moving forward thinking well it'll
start getting better tomorrow or the next day and it just kept getting worse but i did get an mri
in pensacola and i learned that you know it was a big herniated disc 1.5 centimeters which is about
5 8 5 8 of an inch and 14 millimeters is 9 16. so so let's say 5 8. so what i understand is hernia
herniated discs are measured in millimeters and mine was one and a half centimeters so
it was plenty big the advice you know i was staying in bed and a lot of the advice was
you know with a back you may not want to move but you really should you know get up every
hour and walk so i was doing that i was getting up every hour even at night and walking and i was
actually making myself worse and chiropractic care same thing we tried the chiropractor
i can tell you that i cried on the table the second treatment and i said make it stop i mean it
was so awful and we learned using me as a guinea pig i really should not have had chiropractic care
with a with a herniated disc also we learned i had i think three physical therapy sessions
we learned right away that i could not do any stretching or exercises i was in such acute pain
that any movement was making it worse so the reason why you didn't hear from us the last
two fridays was because i was in too much pain she couldn't sit up the timing was horrible
because the blue angels had were coming to town there were no campgrounds to be had
and pensacola is a small town so there wasn't a lot of choice as far as getting spinal care
right so i'm in this agony which is worse seeing you know being in agony or like you
watching me being in agony it was very stressful and and that was that was part of what was
causing my ability to make the right decisions i was so i was so frantic i just didn't know what to
do and and i would i would say often that i just don't know what to do i'm at a loss and and you
know that's on me i i take responsibility for that but but i got to where i said you know i'm blinded
by pain i i can't make a decision i just i finally just said look because we always make decisions
jointly and we we agree and i finally just said i'm not going to make a decision i am in too
much pain right and that's when you stepped up and right and and changed everything right
yeah towards towards the end of this ordeal we're now in like coming up to the end of week
four we're closing in on week five i'm calling every every campground in pensacola to see if i
can get a site there and and i'm coming up md so i'm i'm looking okay where do we go from here if
if we have to move again which direction do we go do we backtrack and go to mobile or do we go
forward and go to tallahassee and i thought well mobile's 50 miles away let's just take the shorter
the shorter route and i found the one that we're in here which is uh not in the greatest part of
town but but it is the the campground the people are nice it's quiet it's nice it's it's nothing
fancy but it's exactly what we need at exactly the right time and the price is great too yeah
the price was i was willing to pay anything but but the price it turns out that it's 500 it's a
little under 500 a month here so if we had to stay you know that's that's not going to be a
problem but the key was now if you're taking a long rv trip you you want to think about this and
certainly if you're a full-time rver the key is if something goes wrong and there's a medical issue
most likely you'll be like us we stay away from cities we stay away from urban areas
you will want to change that and get to where there is services and support and do
some looking because the closer you get to urban the harder it is of course to find campgrounds
so we pack up make the hour drive to get here oh and it's not we he i could not do anything
yeah he had to do everything and of course make me meals and help me get dressed the whole bit
yeah yeah the odds were smiling on us because i i started researching doctors and i just i put in
back doctors mobile alabama and i got a list of them came up and the first or second one i can't
remember now which it was was the orthopedic group here in mobile and luckily they were able to get
us in for we were coming we came in on tuesday we had an appointment wednesday and i called tuesday
when we got here and i said we just need to see you today you started
reading more on online and and oh yes nerve damage and that your bladder your bladder
was starting to shut down i was starting to have issues with being able to walk and you know it's
kind of dragging my foot and that kind of thing my disc was pushing on that nerve root so hard
that i was having all it felt like there was a fire down my leg well this is where the a-team
comes in so we have patreon members for people that want to connect with us more personally and
get more interaction and one of the members there chris hurley christopher hurley thank you so much
he was like if you have a 1.5 centimeter hernia nothing's going to touch that not going to be
any physical therapy only thing you need is surgery and all you're doing by delaying that is
increasing the likelihood of nerve damage and that really spoke to me because nothing was helping
dr andrew henderson highly recommend so he says yes you know it makes sense to have surgery and
and i ask the questions that you're supposed to ask i said you know why should i have the
surgery by you i said i had heard that you should have a neurosurgeon and he is not a neurosurgeon
no he's a spine spine surgeon now he is he is the only doctor in mobile who is certified to do this
micro distectomy procedure yeah i had a discectomy a microdesign microdiscectomy and that's what he
said he's the only incision is about that long he said if i had a neurosurgeon do it i would be in
the hospital for days because i'd be opened up versus having this small incision and of course
the healing would have taken longer the expense so that was wonderful and that was whatever it
is you know the god's smiling on us a god wink a miracle whatever you call it that we happen to get
and and he saw us on tuesday we're in surgery and on thursday midday i mean we just felt so blessed
to have found dr henderson he just um yeah he he was just great if you if you're seeing this doctor
i can't thank you enough so it's been four days and you can see i'm up and about now i do have
right now some residual nerve stuff going on i'm hoping and i'm i'm believing that i will
get better but i have some weird feelings in my i mean the nerves been dangled for a month yeah
that nerve you do traumatize that nerve and it's going to take time right so just you know so i'm
hoping that i'll be 100 but if i'm not i'm still so grateful i'm having a little bit of issues
with balance a little bit issues with sensations it feels like like i'm wearing fuzzy socks with
a hole ripped out of one i mean it feels really weird but i am also noticing that i'm listing to
the left a lot so i'm being very careful but there are some other points we wanted to make um so like
okay so i had to pay for some of this out of pocket for most of this out of pocket this for
some reason was considered elective surgery and and i don't know that my doctor said that but i
think that the insurance or something and it's not elective unless you elect to be in excruciating
pain for the rest of your life i never should have been in pain as long as i was for a
whole four weeks so that part has me a little upset you know that because the whole medical
i mean we made some mistakes too but this whole the whole medical system in this country
right now the way i look at it it just sucks well i just want to make the point that i'm fortunate i
am not you know a single mom raising two kids working in a diner i would have lost my job
right away oh yeah i would have lost my job because i couldn't show up to work
number one um and how would i have gotten the kids ready you know that kind of thing i mean i feel so
fortunate that i had paul but i also feel upset that if i have gone through this then there are
people out there that probably lost their jobs because of this you know didn't have the help
to you know get the kids ready for school or maybe they got kicked out of their apartment
so my heart goes out to you and that leads right into what you were saying about talk about that
how the insurance sucks the insurance paid twelve hundred dollars on a on a more than a 5 000
um procedure the i got everything discounted down like they do if you're gonna pay out of
pocket yeah it's gonna be a little bit over five thousand dollars which i'm grateful for
but that's a lot of money yeah imagine if you didn't have that money in the bank what would
what would your options have been i mean you since they're calling this elective you know it's it's
like uh yeah we've got serious issues with our with our medical system here and and i've never
seen it more clearly than i have over the last month just remember health is more important
than anything you need to have some money if you're thinking about doing this life you need to
have some money so that you can afford to change your plans you need to have that emergency money
and insurance now if this had happened to you because you're over 65 you would not
have the issues i've got medicare and i've got a supplement but if it happened to you you wouldn't
pay very much so this is something to think about if you're under 65 is to make sure your insurance
is adequate mine i'm okay with it pays a flat fee i don't have any deductibles i don't have
any co-payments but in this situation the flat fee wasn't a whole lot before i came out on the road
um long time viewers know i'm a pretty serious cyclist and and i was riding a lot
and i crashed ended up in intensive care for four days i broke five ribs collarbone cracked
vertebrae collapsed along i mean i was a mess and i was like i said four days in intensive care
i saw the bills that that came through but medicare and my supplement covered them but it was
it was a quarter of a million dollars let us know in the comments if your insurance concerns we'd
love to hear that you have enough insurance before you go on the road because this is not
something you want to overlook so in a roundabout way my back problems were caused by rv life
before i hit the road i was doing yoga and i was doing it for 10 years now long time viewers know
that i broke my hand about a year into rv life so that first year in rv life i continue to do yoga
highly recommend a fifth wheel you've got the tall roofs you can tall ceilings you can do
those sun salutations and stuff but when i broke my hand i stopped doing yoga and i never started
it back up so that was mistake number one and then the biggest mistake was i was just sitting in rv
furniture with an rv chair and doing my work six hours at a time editing videos and stuff now these
chairs this is the chair you sit in basically yes i mean one we have four of these and and you
yeah this is you spend eight hours a day sitting in one of these chairs one thing that we did do
right was um i replaced the mattress if you've never owned an rv the rv mattresses are horrible
doesn't matter how much you spend on your rig you'll find those rv mattresses are terrible
we did have a good memory foam mattress we do have a good one but the sitting so
the combination of weakening my muscles by not doing yoga and then sitting in a non-ergonomic
fashion was was bad so we are going to fix that we'll have an upcoming video about the renovations
that we make yeah it's going to be interesting it's going to be a major renovation of the of
the inside of the camper many of you have reached out via email and asked what's going on we haven't
seen a video from you guys is there something wrong here's a little secret that a lot of people
that are on youtube don't know there is something on every youtube channel page called community
or at least on when your channel gets big enough you get this community tab so we actually posted
the last two weeks on that page but you won't know that we've posted unless you ring the bell
i just want to say i'm so grateful to be sitting to be able to walk i actually i had been laying
in the truck every time that we moved anywhere or drove anywhere i had to lay in the back so i rode
in the front seat yesterday we yes we drove down to dolphin island about 40 minutes and i got to
look and i was like wow it's so nice to see palm trees because i had not been looking out since we
were in kentucky for the last year he even got out of the truck and walked around fort gaines it's a
old military fort that dates back to the early 1800s i think 1821. we want to thank you guys so
much as you can tell we've kind of been through it this past month it's made it so much easier having
your love and support and we it we are just moved to tears by how much love we've gotten from you
all yeah i i second all of that and just from the heart you guys are the are the best i mean
i've been reading your comments as you know i don't often respond in the comments section but
i do read them all and and uh a lot of them have brought me to tears they've just been so great
so it's good to be back and i have to say we are now done with back videos and we are going to
be giving you lots of exciting content and we're excited about that yeah we got a lot more we got
a lot of stuff in the can already that it's just a matter of editing and getting up which is what
liz's job is i'm i'm just i'm just the eye candy yeah you're the talent on the channel