Ozarks Healthcare gets vet back on duty

Photography by James Moore

After spinal surgery, Pittman embraces life’s small victories and looks forward with renewed optimism

Don Pittman doesn’t do sitting still. After 19.5 years of military service and presently living on a farm with animals, the 65-year-old is used to being on the go, tending to what needs to be done. 

In recent years, however, a back injury suffered while still in the U.S. Navy had deteriorated to the point the pain was making his legs buckle. 

“In 1981 I fell through a hatch carrying a 70-pound projectile,” he said. “The ship took, like, a 20-degree roll and I lost my balance. I went down and I hit my back and neck on the knife edge of the hatch. From ’81 to ’93, I went through physical therapy – massage therapy, shock treatments, trigger point injections. They just kept saying that I had a severe case of whiplash and muscle spasms. 

Pittman’s medical ordeal continued after he was discharged in 1995. Veterans Administration doctors in Florida implanted a spinal stimulator that ultimately didn’t work. When he and his wife moved to West Plains, he visited Ozarks Healthcare Orthopedics and Spine where he wound up under the care of Dr. Troy Caron. 

“Dr. Caron took pictures and x-rays and did a contrast of my whole spine,” Pittman said. “Then he goes, ‘What do you want to do first, your upper or your lower? They’re both shot.’ I said my bottom hurts the most because every now and then I get shooting pains down my right leg and I will fall, my leg would give out. I told him, ‘Go ahead, do it all. Fix it.’”

The operation involved cleaning up years of scar tissue and decompressing Pittman’s discs from L2 to S1 which were then fused. Pittman spent three days recovering in the hospital before being discharged with a walker. In short order he graduated to a cane and by late September was even up to turning a few laps around the yard on the riding lawn mower. 

He said he’s not quite 100 percent, but he’s getting better and feeling more hopeful than he has in a long time.

“I have a 40-acre farm. I got eight cows, five chickens, three lambs,” he said. “Now, Dr. Caron did restrict me for the first seven weeks from the mower. This last time I saw him he said, ‘Do it in spurts. If it bothers your back, then get off.’

“I’m a little stiff in bending and I can’t put my socks on yet, but anyways, he’s a very good doctor. I drew a good one.”