ARLINGTON — Max Scherzer thought he was in the clear. It was three weeks after he and the Texas Rangers won their first World Series title and Scherzer believed the back pain that forced him out of Game 3 of the World Series was healing.
An MRI after the season showed some inflammation and a week after the Rangers championship parage it as feeling better.
"I feel great, I can feel progress," Scherzer said he felt at the time. "I'm getting out of this back spasm thing."
And then, two days later ...
"All of a sudden, I had never pain in my leg," said Scherzer, who turns 40 in July. "I was like, 'Alright, something's not right."
Scherzer gave it the weekend but it didn't improve. He alerted the doctors, who administered an epideral, which typically takes 48 to 72 hours to work.
So on Thanksgiving Night, at the 48-hour mark, pain shoots down Scherzer's calf.
"So I'm like, 'Oh, no, what do I do? What do I do,'" he said.
He toughed it out through another weekend but the pain didn't subside. He couldn't even raise his calf, which was a red flag for Scherzer. He was given a second epideral but nothing changed. Doctors did another MRI and this time they detected a herniated disc.
"They couldn't believe it," he said. "They even looked back at that first MRI. Now, it's completely different and it's clear as day."
Scherzer had surgery in December to repair the herniated disc, the first of his career.
"I take this on as a badge of honor," he said during the Rangers FanFest at Globe Life Field. "I'm 39 years old before my first surgery, so it's my first time having to go through something structurally like this."
Scherzer is keeping a glass half-full view of his circumstances, which are likely to prevent him from return to the Rangers roster until July.
"I wasn't do anything [physical]. I wish I could tell you that actually I was jumping off a boat, or something crazy," he said. "But, no, that's not the case. I'm literally hobbling around chasing kids, that was the extent of what I was doing."
Scherzer says six weeks since his surgery he's had no complications.
"I actually feel great, like the surgery worked," he said. "The moment I had it, I went home and I felt great. I didn't even have to take anti-inflammatories.
He's in s stage of building muscle back up and figuring out "how to keep the arm primed as you're navigating" the rehah process.
"The biggest concerns are bending, lifting, twisting, your BLTs, and how you slowly phase those in and how you slowly phase in throwing. That's a challenge," he said.
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