![]() If the hole does not heal, it can lead to a myriad of painful symptoms when a patient is upright, among them the positional head pain that I experienced. A hole or tear in the dura, such as one caused by a lumbar puncture, allows the CSF that cushions those organs to escape. They suggested it might be a spinal CSF leak caused by the procedure.ĬSF surrounds the brain and spinal cord, and is contained by a connective tissue membrane called the dura mater. Together, these symptoms rose to a level of pain that left me reeling.Īs I shared my confusion and fear with my Legal Nomads community, readers who had suffered post-puncture complications themselves pointed me in the right direction. My back burned uncontrollably from top to bottom. I felt too nauseous to eat, and had trouble finding words. My brain felt like it was sagging in my head, as if it were an anvil pushing down into my neck. My legs were jelly, while at the same time it felt like someone had poured concrete into my lower spine. Immediately following the procedure, I could barely walk. Writer Jodi Ettenberg, standing in front of the Treasury in UNESCO-listed Petra, Jordan in 2011. The lumbar puncture did not go smoothly, with multiple attempts needed in order to access my CSF. Prior to the procedure, I was informed that I may have a headache that would dissipate after a few days of rest. While in the US, I developed symptoms that landed me in the hospital, where doctors recommended a lumbar puncture to rule out specific conditions. At that time, I was developing guides devoted to gluten-free dining for fellow celiacs, settling into a home base in Oaxaca, Mexico and feeding my readers from there, while working on freelance and public speaking projects that excited me. I hadn’t heard of a cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) leak when I underwent the procedure that gave me one.Īfter eight years of eating and writing my way through South Asia and Mexico, I spent the summer in New York house-sitting for friends. Then, in 2017, it all ended with a medical procedure gone wrong. In turn, I gained a thriving community of people who were not only interested in travel and food, but also storytelling, curiosity and personal growth. I kept the site ad-free and instead focused on long-form writing and creating resources that my readers asked for, which provided me with an income. It grew an audience quickly and received early press coverage, which propelled me into an unexpected career journey. I shared the experiences of coming back to myself through my travels with family, friends and former clients on my website, Legal Nomads. I moved to Asia, got cancer, and then coronavirus happenedīack then, there were few long-term travelers documenting their trips online. ![]() Slowly exploring the world helped me recalibrate. I became more negative in my thinking, quicker to complain. With 90-hour work weeks, I forgot some of those life skills. Even so, I discovered that travel returned perspective to me, something I had not realized I had lost during my years of corporate work.īefore I embarked on my career as a lawyer, I found it easy to put myself in someone else’s shoes and offer them grace. I didn’t travel to reject societal norms I simply wanted to experience life in an unconventional way. I planned to return to the legal field once that adventure ended. I quit my job as a lawyer in 2008, leaving for what I thought would be a one-year trip around the world. That was the instant that I realized I would likely never return to the life I’d worked so hard to build.īy then, I had spent almost a decade as an accidental entrepreneur, growing a business I loved centered around food and exploration. Sticking to the stereotype, that moment came for me at 5 a.m., on a morning about two months after I was left incapacitated by a lumbar puncture. That moment gets a lot of airtime in books and movies, often as a pivotal, middle-of-the-night epiphany in a protagonist’s narrative arc. During any life-changing event, there comes a moment when the fog of the crisis temporarily clears, and you realize with certainty that things will never be the same again. ![]()
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