Back to Life…
Tomorrow is a very important day. You see, I’ve had an issue with my back going back to my twenties. Sometimes it would lock up a little but I could fight through it and it wasn’t that big of a deal. In my 30s I noticed it more but again, for the most part I would be able to function normally. By around 2016 it was starting to be more troublesome. I had retired from all my recreational sports leagues and teams a few years earlier and with being less active, I gained more weight. It was unfortunate but I just couldn’t keep up with the sports any more. When you are into your 30s or 40s you start to notice changes in your body. You can’t recover like you once did. No longer could a single good nights’ sleep refresh me from a physically grueling day. It often took at least 2. My knees began to ache more frequently. My back felt worse and worse each year. I was less active and a bit heavier than I had been. In the spring of 2019, I hurt my back while at school. I tried to pick up some very heavy books from my little half locker, (of course I had the stupid bottom half) and my back went. I hobbled around for days. I felt pain in my lower back, my hip and my groin. I definitely pulled or aggravated something. It took a few weeks before I could recover enough to be close to how I was. I didn’t go to the doctor because I thought I just pulled or injured something and just needed some time to recover. A few months later during the summer I went for a long bike ride on a trail in Canada but unfortunately the trail/path was old, broken down and bumpy as hell. The next day my back was on fire and I could barely stand, let alone walk so the next week, when I was able, I did go to a doctor, an orthopedic one. They did some imaging and determined I had spinal stenosis. At the time I had no idea what that was. For those who don’t it is when the openings in the spine get narrowed and a cause a pinching or squeezing of the spinal cord and/or nerves. The doctors also said I had a herniated disc in my lower back. They said rest and taking it easy would help with the disc. They also told me to lose weight and to get trigger point injections to calm my lower back down. I got the injections but I felt like they did little to nothing. I tried to lose weight but a bad diet and an inability to walk and exercise was making things very difficult. I was having trouble walking or standing for more than 3-5 minutes at a time without having to lean on something or sit to alleviate the intense lower back pressure. I felt stuck. But I had yet to learn what stuck truly is.
Then the pandemic happened. March 2020. The back issues became less of an issue... well kinda. It was cheating because it stopped being an issue when I didn’t have to go anywhere. I began working from home as the shutdown started and the thing I loved most about it was not having to take several buses and use up 2-3 total hours each workday just traveling. I also enjoyed not having to get dressed and leave the house everyday. I didn’t have to put myself through the pain of walking around and waiting for buses, sometimes having to stand at stops without benches. I was happy about staying home because of the increase in free time and decrease in pain but what I didn’t comprehend was how it was going to be just as bad and then even worse despite how great it may have seemed at the time.
My worsening health and increasing fear of this new Covid thing made me never leave the house. I remember a week into the pandemic going to a supermarket and having a panic attack because people would not respect space and were so cavalier about what was happening. I wanted nothing to do with anything or anybody. I was able to work from home and then I discovered that you can get almost anything delivered to your door. This alleviated my fears for the most part but exacerbated my condition. I started to put on more weight with all the inactivity. I got lazier. My back began to hurt even more when I was on my feet. Instead of 3-5 minutes of standing/walking time I maybe had 1-2 before the pain became unbearable. Sleeping became difficult. I had to experiment and try different sleeping positions. It took maybe a week or two to finally get it right and be able to sleep without back pain waking me up throughout the night. In hindsight I should have tried to follow up on my back/spine care but I was terrified to go anywhere indoors due to Covid. Plus it was difficult to get appointments for non emergencies due to the pandemic. I assured myself I’d figure this out later somehow and focused on just being as covid and stress free as I could because my stress levels were higher than they had ever been. While I wasn’t exactly going in the right direction, or literally anywhere at all, I felt safe and in difficult times like that, that’s all you think you need. This was the spring of 2020.
Fast forward over 3 years and things are worse. Not only can I barely stand or walk for maybe 2 minutes before the pain is excruciating and my legs rapidly lose power, but the inability to move and exercise like I would want has caused other, new conditions and exacerbated others. When I post pictures of me being out and about, it’s really thru the kindness of friends. Friends who invite me out, pick me up or take me or me and my bike somewhere. You see, biking is one of the few things I can kinda do but I can’t even do that like I used to. I can ride for 10-15 minutes at a time before I have to stop and sit somewhere to recover. I had to turn down invitations or stifle the desire to go to many cultural and arts events, festivals, weddings, celebrations, etc. the past few years because of this condition. This summer, now that things are returning to some kind of normal in terms of events, I feel left out. And I’m beyond sick of missing out on everything. I’m sick of missing out on life. I want to return to my own normal and just hope that this isn’t now it.
I had a coughing/breathing issue back in June and went in to see my primary doctor about it. They had me go for chest x-rays just to make sure my lungs were okay. It turned out great as my lungs were fine, and the coughing/breathing issue was actually a side effect to a new medication I was taking. Within 2 days of switching that medication the coughing was gone but something interesting happened. The chest x-ray actually revealed something else. My doctor could see the back issues and deterioration in my spine. He mentioned this to me and I spoke about attempts to do something about it 3 years earlier and basically was just told to lose weight to help the issue. Thankfully my doctor didn’t patronize me. He told me he wanted me to see the “best spine doctor in the area”. Giddy up. So I have an appointment tomorrow. Obviously I’m not gonna show up and walk out of there an hour later a healed man but I am looking forward to having an expert take a look at this and tell me what they think. We’ll probably do some imaging. I’m gonna give them so much information on this from my end so nothing is left out. I want to reclaim my life. I want to be able to go for a walk every day. I want to not be embarrassed or ashamed to go to public places, afraid I’m gonna break chairs, fall, clumsily bump into things or have to have people see me struggling just to make the shortest walks. My whole life, I was always the quieter one, the observer, the guy who tried to blend in with the background or the scenery but now when I go anywhere I feel like I’m the one being watched. Look at that poor guy. People asking me if I’m okay when I am struggling and then wishing I could hide. I want to be incognito out in the world and these days I am anything but. So it makes me not want to go anywhere. This must change. I’m going to this doctor and I’m gonna try to do whatever they ask of me. I really would love for them to eventually find a way to give me long overdue relief but more importantly, I really would love for them to give me hope.
