A Passion for Running

Warning: There is some depressing shit coming up here. I’d like to be clear I’m not looking for pity. Rather, I’m writing this because it helps me get the crap out, plus there’s the hope something I say will help someone else.
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I have a confession to make: I’m in pain all the time. It’s been this way for me for many years. My life, for as long as I can remember, has consisted of degrees of pain ranging from nagging annoyance to outrageous and constant pain.

Specifically, I’ve had an awful time with my spine. For years, most of my troubles were in my lower back - a result of being in a truck roll at seventeen years of age. I’d often go weeks enduring excrutiating pain and walking around with a back that looked like a question mark - no exaggeration. However, as with most things, there were lessons to be learned, and the wisdom I gained from lower back pain was that with exercise and strength training I could minimize the frequency and duration of those awful experiences. The lesson was what eventually got me running again (after a one year layoff) and, as time marched on, I was rewarded with less and less lower back trouble.

But, while learning to mitigate those problems, I began to have more and more difficulty with my upper spine - my neck and shoulders.

I’m guessing it’s been three years since I started dealing with neck problems. But, it could be longer. It’s funny how time passes and you just learn to accept. Anyway, although I don’t know the duration, I do know the pain has been with me far too long, it’s wearing me down, and I have to do something about it because I’m going mad.

To describe the pain is difficult, but scales seem to work for most people so I’ll start there. Most of the time, my pain is at about a five on a scale of ten. In other words, the minimum amount of pain I feel at any given moment is a five. That’s the minimum amount of constant, non-relenting pain I have.

When I sit at my desk at work, the pain hovers between a 7 or 8 out of 10. Plus, I have constant pins and needles (like you get in your arm when you bang your funny bone) from my neck all the way down into my left shoulder blade. Lastly, I have a constant creepy-crawly feeling in my neck. I wish I could explain it but I can’t. My neck just feels really crawly on the inside.

It’s awful. How else can I put it?

It’s given me complete understanding for how chronic pain can affect one’s life. I understand how people with pain can slip into depression because I often feel I’m damn close to it myself.

Having this chronic pain has made it hard for me to concentrate, to focus, to think and to get things done. Some days I feel as though I am going insane and there are moments when I have felt like a volcano ready to burst at the smallest of irritations.

I often bounce like a ping-pong ball between self-pity and “I’m going to beat this”. But, over the last six months, the pain has gotten worse and worse and moments of the latter kind have been fleeting at best.

Some days, I feel my life is shit because of this pain and I search for a way out of it - all the while hoping and praying there will be a way out because I’ve got a good 40 years ahead of me and I sure as hell can’t imagine myself spending that time like this.
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What you just read was written two months ago. Pretty depressing and bleak huh? Well let me update you a bit. Two months ago, the pain and my state of mind got so bad I felt I was starting to crack. I went to my Doctor - a lovely man. But, a lovely man with no clue when it comes to spinal problems, or dealing with chronic pain. He checked me out. Had me do some mobility stuff and then sent me for x-rays. We sat down and looked at the pictures together and he showed me where there had been trauma (car accident) and how my spine was compressed in that area - likely the cause of all the nerve issues and pain.

But then he told me I had good mobility and that many people were worse off than me - that they were essentially crippled. He patted me on the back, said I would “have to live with the annoyance”, said there wasn’t much that could be done and sent me on my way.

I was dumbfounded.

It was hard not to cry in the car on the way back to work. In fact, I don’t think I was able to stop the tears. All I could think was, “I can’t accept this. I can’t live with this pain any longer. I have to do something”. So, I thought about some things that had helped me in the past and resolved to go see a chiropractor and, if that didn’t work, a physiotherapist and if that didn’t work…

But, I hadn’t been happy with the chiropractor I’d been seeing so I decided to visit Lori’s. He’s a busy guy and very hard to get into see but what did I have to lose.

Ten days later, I was in his office. He did a really hands-on assessment all the while saying things like, “this is not good”, “oh Mark, this is bad” and, “how long have you lived with this? I can’t imagine how much pain you must be in”. I could have cried - again. In the span of ten minutes this man had identified all the centers of pain in my neck and shoulders and was telling me he could help me.

He explained that in addition to being a Chiropractor, he was also a certified Active Release Therapy practitioner and said that was what I needed because I had a TON of soft-tissue damage that was impacting my nervous system in a very very bad way.

He gave me my first treatment. It was painful but I told him to do his worst if it meant a release from pain of the chronic variety. It took roughly six weeks and a dozen treatments but I’m sitting here with relatively no pain. It now hovers around a one to two on a scale of ten.

To sound very cliche’ about it, a cloud has lifted. My ability to focus and think is returning. The depression I’ve only recently become aware of is gone and the screaming inside my head is going away. For the first time in years, I feel good.

So, the lessons are: Don’t give up, don’t listen to people who say “live with it”, and don’t put 100% of your confidence in medical doctors because they are not the be-all and end-all when it comes to matters of the spine.

I could cry - again.