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'I don’t think I realised quite how strongly I identified with myself as being a husband and father until it wasn’t there’
&Photo: ADAM HANCHER
We hear a lot about women and divorce: the woman ends up alone – generally with the children. She has little money. She loses social status. She finds it hard to socialise (she has the kids). She suffers from a loss of confidence, loss of economic security, finds it hard to get work (she has the kids). On and on it goes… I recently went through a separation and found that these stories all resonated with me.
However, of late, I have also found myself listening to men’s stories of divorce as well as women’s. I used to think that
came out bette that they pick themse they cope with the loss of their children in a way that most women
they move on to new lives, new wives, new children.
Certainly that seemed to me, aged 11, to be the case when my own parents separated. The next time I saw my father a few weeks later, he’d swapped the family estate car for a brand-new, two-seater, sporty number. I will never forget seeing the shock and hurt on my mother’s face as he drove up to the front door.
But talking to the men for this article has revealed that the differences between the sexes are not as straightforward as I’d imagined. From a woman’s point of view, I know how tough separation is, but what about men? How do they handle divorce? What is their story?
I meet Tom Evans at a restaurant in London. He doesn’t live in the capital. He moved out years ago to a large house in Lewes – large enough for him, his American wife, Liz, and his two children, Peter and Amanda, now aged seven and five.
But the idyll didn’t last long. Just after Amanda was born, he and his wife split up, at Evans’ insistence. “I was miserable,” he recalls. “I didn’t feel loved or supported. I just worked all the time. I was a good provider. Isn’t that what a husband does? But there was no warmth in my life. I felt I had no choice but to end my marriage.”
He says his wife was shocked by his decision. “I think she didn’t want the marriage to end, but it worked better for her than it did for me.” He tells me that, since then, despite the lure of London and the pull of a social life, dinners out, opera and the theatre, he still chooses to stay in Sussex. “I’m a homebody, really,” he admits.
After the divorce, his wife moved back to America with the children. “I didn’t expect that,” he says. “I didn’t mind her going back for long visits but I didn’t know she was going to stay there and not bring the kids back. It’s awful. I have very little access to my children. Every time I hear about Peter being in a football match and I’m not there to support him, it really hurts. I’m his father. I should be there.”
He describes his lifestyle before his marriage. “I was a bit of a playboy. I had all the toys, a lovely flat, great life, cars, women, expensive clothes, holidays. In my job as an international lawyer, I travelled the world. But I always felt like a Dickens character, one who had his nose pressed up against the glass, looking in on other people’s happy family lives.”
When he met Liz, there was a spark. He invited her to Italy. He proposed. They married in 2004. Two children soon followed. “I thought we’d have it all,” he observes. “But we were totally incompatible. We did go to counselling. We did try a reconciliation. It didn’t work.”
However, separating wasn’t that simple when it came to his emotions. “After Liz left, I did have many moments sunk down in a chair, wondering what on earth I had done. I’d stand in the kitchen and feel absolutely terrible.”
He is obviously very hurt. I want to point out that his anguish about his marriage has gone on longer than his actual union with his wife. I am not sure what this is about. He seems disproportionately angry with her, as if his anger has become his identity and he perhaps clings on to it rather than face what he has become: a single man with an estranged wife and children who live on the other side of the Atlantic.
Evans has, by his own admission, steered clear of any other major involvements – and yet he is a tall, dark-haired, attractive, well-educated, solvent man, not yet 50, with his own teeth and hair. Why not just get on with it, find a new identity?
He sighs. “I hope to, it’s just that I feel lost. I don’t believe I have anything. Even the law seems against me. If you are a woman and you have a man’s children, you get anything you want.”
This isn’t, of course, strictly true. Many women feel as financially hard done by as men do, post-divorce. It seems, however, that money is an issue on which men become particularly hung up. Jim Parton, a former chairman of , who himself went through a divorce 20 years ago, agrees.
“It seems to be what focuses and divides everyone. It becomes the battleground. It’s easier for men to battle over hard cash than on an emotional level. Men don’t do emotions. It’s too psychobabble for us, so money becomes the catch-all for everything men feel and all the anger they have at how badly they feel they have been treated by their ex-wives, the courts etc.”
My friend Andrew, who has been divorced for many years, tells me, “It’s the closest thing to rape for a man.” I goggle at him, shocked. I cannot equate a divorce case with rape. It seems a totally inappropriate comparison, far too extreme. How can separation possibly feel like such a violation?
“Because it can be so harsh,” he states, “and it never goes away – and in the same way that women feel powerless and often shunned and unacknowledged by the courts, so do men when it comes to divorce.”
In his case, he was fortunate. “My ex-wife and I are both sentient grown-ups,” he says. “We didn’t go to lawyers. We didn’t argue about money. We agreed to split childcare of our son. We just refused to fight each other.” However, he does know male friends who feel ripped apart by their divorces.
“They seemingly have very little rights over seeing their children. They are financially ruined. The lives they so carefully built up are ripped apart, especially in the courts. It can take years to get over it. Sometimes, they never actually get over it at all.”
According to a recent survey, divorce makes men feel devastated, betrayed, confused and even suicidal, while, it claims, women are more likely to feel relieved, liberated and happy following a split.
The most striking aspect of the
For Tim Scott, 49, the hardest part of his decision to end his marriage to his wife Jane, a doctor, was what would happen to his relationship with his son Robert, then three, now 13. “I knew I’d miss him. I didn’t realise how much.”
There does seem to be an unspoken rule that the children stay with the mother at whatever cost to the man – or to the children. I know very few women who would leave their marriage, however horrible it was, if it meant leaving the children behind. Why then, if the man chooses to leave, does he then feel surprised and shocked at how much he misses his children?
“It’s a difficult one,” says Scott. “I just knew our relationship was at an end and that sort of took precedence.” He tells the story of how he and Jane took Robert to San Francisco. “We were on a boat coming in to the harbour and I’d arranged to go out that night. I’d got babysitting for Robert, a table booked at a top restaurant. But, just an hour before we were due to go out, Jane said she was too tired to go and wanted to stay on the boat.”
He went out, cadged a cigarette from a man on deck. “I knew it was over then,” he recollects.
But maybe Jane was tired? Maybe life with a small child was taking its toll?
“No,” he says, “we were fundamentally incompatible.” But of course th were they always incompatible or did life push them apart? Scott’s comments would certainly ring true to most married couples with young children: no time, exhausted, little intimacy, done in by the end of the day, anger over who was doing more childcare versus who was having a better time. “We’d ceased to be a team,” he says.
Cut forward 10 years, though, and things between Scott and his former wife are more amicable. They share the childcare for Robert. Scott has, in the past, paid maintenance – but for the past 16 months hasn’t managed to afford to give Jane anything, due to a change in his circumstances. “I don’t have anything to give,” he declares, simply. “It’s been a hard time, in terms of work. I don’t think Jane particularly likes that, but she does understand.”
But how does he feel? Has life turned out as he expected?
He says the grief he felt about the loss of family life was unexpected. “I don’t think I realised quite how strongly I identified with myself as being a husband and father until it wasn’t there anymore. I was absolutely poleaxed by losing Robert, by not having the day-to-day relationship with him.”
Scott says he didn’t leave his marriage in order to find someone else. “That wasn’t part of it,” he says. He has had two relationships since his divorce, but now is resolutely alone. He lives in a small house with his dog. Robert is around a lot. They do many things together: sailing, canoeing, just hanging out together. The rest of the time, Scott says he cooks, smokes sneaky cigarettes and wanders around the kitchen listening to Radio 4. Jane has met someone else, with whom she is happy, he mentions.
So, the all-important question: is Scott happy? Does he believe he made the right decision? “I have nothing but positive feelings for Jane. I could not live with her, but I love and admire her. Divorce is a horrible thing and has scarred me, but it is no more unnatural than a death and should not be stigmatised as such.”
None of the men I spoke to for the article had left for another woman. This is statistically rare – unless they are being economical with the truth – and, of course, shapes profoundly the nature of their experience of divorce.
My friend Sian Blore, a divorce lawyer, tells me that of the people she sees in her work, 90 per cent of the men have someone else waiting in the wings. “There’s always someone else around somewhere. I know we don’t believe it but it’s true. Very few men leave a marriage without someone else being there for them.”
For women, she says, it’s different. “They have the ‘grass is greener’ syndrome. They leave because they are unhappy and they can’t bear it any longer, not because they’ve lined up a rosy new future.”
But for all the men I have talked to the same issues come up: a sense of loss, feeling somehow undermined, absolute sadness at the way they have lost touch with their children, anger, fury even, at the way they feel treated by the , a conviction that somehow, they have “lost out”.
Yet there is another world out there. I have also met men who, although scarred and sad, have found a new life that works for them. For most men, there is hope. Even Tom Evans, who feels so embittered, has hope. “Well, Liz has offered to bring the children over for a visit, so we’ll see, maybe things will change.”
This is how one male friend of mine whose wife left him puts it: “In many ways I admire my ex-wife. Our relationship was dead. We were living hollow lives but I would never have called it off. I really didn’t want us to separate. I couldn’t imagine how it would be not to be with the children, yet, as painful as it has been, we are both happier now… or least, we have the potential to be happier.”
Some names have been changed
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AdvertisementMicrodiscectomy: Spine Surgery for a Herniated DiscUpdated on December 18, 2012Microdiscectomy incision and sutures
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Incision slightly to the left of the spine, about 48 hours after microdiscectomy surgery.Source:
Discectomy for herniated disc with associated leg pain has high success rateWhile surgery for many conditions should be a last resort, for people suffering from a pinched or compressed nerve from a herniated disc that results in leg pain and numbness, a discectomy, or microdiscectomy, is often the solution that finally brings long term relief.
More conservative options should of course be attempted first since spine surgery for a herniated disc, like all surgeries, has risks associated with it. But when non-surgical options fail, a discectomy brings relief to more than 90% of patients with associated leg pain (sciatica) caused by pressure on a nerve from the herniated disc.
Recently, my son had a microdiscectomy to relieve the pain and numbness in his left leg and left foot caused by a herniated disc. While it is way too soon to tell how he will fare in the long term, at the moment the results look very promising.
Non-surgical treatment options for herniated discTime to heal: Luckily for many people who have a mild herniated a disc, time and easing up on physical activities is the only needed remedy to heal. Recovery may take 4 weeks or longer.
Physical therapy may be used to strengthen the back or to relieve pressure that the unhealed herniated disc is placing on surrounding nerves.
Pain killers are sometimes given to patients as a way of relieving the pain caused by compressed nerves from a herniated disc, however they may only provide short term pain relief, if any at all. Read, , for a candid story about one herniated disc sufferer's experience with pain killers.
Cortisone injections may only offer short term relief, but for some people the cortisone/steroid is enough to reduce swelling and inflammation to allow the disc to heal and to relieve pressure on any nerves.
My son's herniated discPlease note, I am not a doctor or medical professional, just a mother telling of her son's experience with a herniated disc and treatment.
Possible cause of herniated disc
It was the last weekend of summer before heading off to college and my son and his friends were getting together for a fun weekend of jet skiing at the lake. After returning from their weekend's adventure my son told me how his back was killing him after slamming down on a wave while riding on a tube attached to a jet ski.
I didn't think much of his back pain at the time, especially since we were in the midst of packing and moving him into his dormitory away at college. In fact, I actually forgot that he hurt his back, thinking at the time that it would feel better in a few days.
Back pain gets worse and now has leg pain too
By mid October my son called me and told me that he was having horrible back and leg pain. I knew he had brought his skate board to college with him and figured his back was sore from all the hard jumping and landing involved in the sport, forgetting about the jet ski incident. Additionally, he was regularly doing a lot of weight lifting, which I also thought could be the cause of his pain.
He went to the doctor at the college's health center (luckily we had , as well as our own employee health insurance) and the doctor prescribed him prescription-strength Tylenol and muscle relaxers. He was advised to see another doctor if the pain did not go away.
Back pain lessens but leg pain worsens
Needless to say, for anyone that has had a herniated disc with compression on a nerve, the Tylenol and muscle relaxers only helped mildly at best, and probably only because they helped him sleep. We figured when he returned home for Thanksgiving break that we would bring him to the orthopedic doctor. The doctor we had in mind is a very well regarded physician and we knew he would offer us an accurate diagnosis.
By the time my son came home for the Thanksgiving holiday break, he really was not complaining about his back anymore, but he did have an upper respiratory illness. With five family members from out-of-town visiting us for the holiday and the fact that my son was otherwise sick with a virus, as well as his sister too, we never got him to the orthopedic doctor as we had intended.
Leg pain becomes unbearable
During the three weeks he was back at college between Thanksgiving break and winter break he called me multiple times telling me how bad his leg was, how he could hardly walk on some days. The extreme pain he was in was very evident in his voice. Helpless to do much, and very concerned about his final exams and grades, I wasn't sure what to do.
MRI reveals herniated disc
After coming home for winter break, he finally had an appointment with the orthopedic surgeon. After getting the MRI result it was confirmed that he had a herniated disc (L4/L5). Unfortunately, since the doctor was on vacation by the time we got the MRI completed, we did not get the results until a couple of days after my son returned to college.
Apparently, with some herniated discs the back pain subsides on its own, but it is the leg and foot pain, as well as tingling and numbness in those extremities, that cause all the misery. Material from the herniated disc itself can put pressure on surrounding nerve roots or the spinal canal, leading to extreme pain and discomfort. The nerve in question, near the L4/L5 disc in my son's case, affects the leg and foot.
MRI of L4-L5 Herniated Disc
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This is an MRI of my son's L4-L5 herniated disc (I believe).Source:
Herniated disc treatment options
We were uncertain of which treatment option to select for my son's herniated disc, especially since he was away at college with hopes to complete the semester. Since it was around four months since the sciatica began due to nerve root impingement, he stood the best chance for a good long term outcome if something was done sooner than later.
Since my son was well beyond the window of time where healing may have occurred on its own, the only two options left were:
Cortisone injections
Microdiscectomy surgery (discectomy)
At first we decided that the best course of action was to attempt an x-ray guided cortisone injection. In fact, we set the wheels in motion to schedule a time for him to return home for this procedure and even got it scheduled at the surgical center. In the meantime, however, his leg and foot pain were worsening to the point where he could no longer get out of bed many days.
Elects to have microdiscectomy (discectomy) surgery
After speaking to the doctor again, the decision was made to forgo the cortisone injection, and instead opt for the microdiscectomy surgery. It turns out cortisone injections may only provide short term relief, it could be weeks, it could be a year, but many times it is not a permanent solution.
In fact, the doctor explained that some insurance companies are beginning to not cover these injections due to their failure rate. The microdiscectomy surgery, on the other hand, while more invasive and risky than an injection, has a very high success rate for herniated disc patients with accompanying leg pain.
In the article, , Holle Abee (habee) describes her pain from pinched nerves and how her pain relief from a cortisone injection to her back only lasted three weeks.
Microdiscectomy (discectomy) surgery scheduled, hopes are high
Finally, the microdiscectomy is scheduled and when I pick my son up from college to head back home for surgery, any slight reservations I have about surgery are alleviated when I see him. Clearly, he is suffering, and is walking with quite a limp. It's painfully obvious that the microdiscectomy surgery for his herniated disc is his only option.
The morning of surgery arrives and my son is not nervous at all, in fact he is quite excited at the prospect of ending all the misery caused by his herniated disc and pinched nerve.
I too am hopeful for an immediate positive outcome, especially after reading the article, , in which the author, Jason Menayan (livelonger), describes how he lived with grueling pain from a herniated disc that was only relieved by a discectomy. Menayan lives nearly two-thousand miles away and while I do not know him personally, he has given me tremendous hope that my son can not only live a life without this particular back and leg pain, but can lead a full and active life in the future.
Now at the hospital, the surgeon comes in to speak to us prior to performing the microdiscectomy. You've got to love surgeons - in a very matter-of-fact manner he explains how he will make the incision, remove some bone (laminectomy) to expose the nerve, and then remove the herniated disc material that is pressing on the nerve root. "Really, quite simple," he states, going on to say that the microdiscectomy will take forty-five minutes to an hour. I had zero doubt that my son was in very capable surgical hands.
Herniated disc material removed during microdiscectomy
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This is a photograph of the herniated disc material removed during my son's microdiscectomy. I am assuming the 1 and 2 markings represent an inch.Source:
After the microdiscectomy
Within a couple of hours after the surgery my son was thrilled -- thrilled that he could already tell that a lot of his leg pain was simply gone. He still had pain in his calf, as if he had done one-hundred leg lifts, he described, but for the most part he finally felt relief from months of pain.
About 48 hours post surgery he was becoming very uncomfortable again, and the prescribed painkillers did not seem to be helping. Thinking that he may be having some post-surgical inflammation (to be expected) I wondered if the inflammation itself could be pressing on the nerve root again. Instead of giving him the prescribed painkiller with Tylenol, we decided to give him Advil since it has anti-inflammatory properties. This seemed to do the trick and the next day he decided that he could return to college.
Nothing about helping your child away at college when they do not feel well is easy. Unfortunately a day after returning to school he was miserable, this time with a fever of 102 degrees and barely able to walk again. To say my bubble burst is to put it mildly.
I personally had cleaned around his surgical wound a day earlier and doubted there was any skin infection. But to be on the safe side I strongly encouraged him to go to the doctor at college so the doctor could examine my son's incision and sutures. Thankfully, no signs of infection were present. Meanwhile, back at home, the surgeon's nurse explained to me that patients can run a fever for three to five days after surgery. Apparently, inflammation from surgery can produce a febrile condition.
Eight days post microdiscectomy
Luckily, the fever only lasted a couple of days and as the fever lessened so too did the leg pain. Eight days after surgery my son told me that he had not had fever for a couple of days and he estimated that his leg was 80% better.
Nerves take time to heal, that is why full recovery from a discectomy or microdiscectomy can take many months. With his latest health report I am hopeful that the sciatica caused by the herniated disc impinging a nerve will be fully gone.
This much I know, my son really had no choice but to have the microdiscectomy surgery, and with an over 90% success rate since he also had sciatica, the outlook was positive. Unfortunately, for people with herniated discs that have back pain but do NOT have leg pain, a discectomy or microdiscectomy is not usually helpful.
Discectomy vs MicrodiscectomyWebMD defines a
a surgery to remove herniated disc material that is pressing on a nerve root or the spinal cord.
WebMD explains that a microdiscectomy differs from a discectomy in that a special microscope is used to view the disc and nerves. The larger view provided by the microscope does not necessitate as large of an incision as is needed for a discectomy, thereby resulting in less damage to the surrounding tissue.
During either procedure (discectomy or microdiscectomy) the surgeon may need to perform a laminectomy (aka laminotomy), which is the removal of a small piece of bone called the lamina in order to expose the nerve. Additionally, both forms of the surgery are performed under general anesthesia.
As the name sounds, the microdiscectomy is less invasive, and this is the procedure that my son underwent to remove the disc material that had become so bothersome. From the photograph of my son above you can see that the microdiscectomy incision is about 2" long.
Microdiscectomy Recovery TimeI guess in our son's case we will never know the exact cause of his herniated disc, whether or not he did in fact injure it jet skiing. If he did injure it that day, I doubt that it could have ever healed on its own as he pursued other athletic interests such as skate boarding and weight lifting. "No pain, no gain" is a real fallacy.
Whatever the cause, the microdiscectomy procedure is complete and he seems well on his way to recovery. For the first few weeks following a microdiscectomy it is important to not bend or lift items over ten pounds. However, it is also important to not lay around and to be sure and walk. In time scar tissue will "fill in" his herniated disc and movement will ensure that the scar tissue itself does not cause future issues.
Microdiscectomy Scar
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Microdiscectomy scar four months after surgerySource: 2012 KTrapp All Rights Reserved
Update: 4 Months Post SurgeryThe first few weeks after surgery I was a bit concerned. My son developed a fever and the pain that seemed to be gone immediately after surgery came back. It turns out that this return of pain and leg numbness was due to post-surgical inflammation.
Of course, microdiscectomy recovery time will vary by patient, but in my son's case, the pain seemed to come and go for the first couple of months, with it being almost gone by the three month mark.
It's now been four months since his microdiscectomy surgery and I'm happy to report that he is virtually pain-free. He says that after he's been very active and on his feet all day that he feels a little leg soreness but it is nothing he can't live with or tolerate. For him, the microdiscectomy for his herniated disc was a definite success!
Poll for people with a herniated disc who have had a microdiscectomy or discectomy:1. How would you describe the outcome of your discectomy or microdiscectomy surgery? All pain is gone Most of the pain is gone (every now and then feel a little twinge of pain) Some days are good, some days are bad I still have a lot of leg and back pain2. Based on the outcome of your surgery and what you know now, would you still have elected to have a discectomy or microdiscectomy? Yes No
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