Well,  my back is officially out of commission.  I haven’t been able to get away and walk for a very long time now. The only thing keeping the pain at bay was the walking. 

The back story

For those that don’t know the back story – ha ha,  get it,  backstory- here’s the dime store version.

Back in August of 2001, I was finishing up paramedic school. I was doing ride time with one of the local departments.  One afternoon we went on a run.  The call was for a young woman,  28 weeks pregnant.  She had started to hemorage. I was at the foot of the cott as we were carry it down a very steep staircase.

At one point I had to lift the cott up above my shoulders not order to get the patient level. That was it.  That one moment changed the course of the rest of my life.

I have an L5, S1 left sided herniation.  I have basically been in pain ever since.  We’re talking crippling pain and it was always there. I was on very high dose percocet for a long time.  I only took them when I needed to but eventually became addicted.

I knew it was a problem when I would get sick if I didn’t take them.  I stopped cold turkey and have not had anything more than Advil since.

The pain never stopped and eventually ended my career in both the fire department and emergency medicine. I’ll be totally honest with you, the pain so bad that if I had been able to drive,  I would have driven my car into a tree. I literally wanted to die because it was the inly thing that would stop the pain.

If I didn’t have Lizze and Gavin at the time,  I honestly don’t know if I would be here today.

I’ve just sorta powered through the pain ever since.  It wasn’t easy and it certainly impacted my personality and by ability to work but I pushed through for my family. 

I actually was told that I needed surgery but was never willing to take the risk and go under the knife.

Walking away from the pain

About 2 years ago I started walking as a means of trying to lose weight. I thought that maybe if I lost weight,  I wouldn’t hurt so bad.

I started walking.  I started out slow but worked up to about 30 miles a week.  So long as I continued walking my back pain was actually gone.  For the first time in 10 years,  I was pain free.  I still had limitations of course but I wasn’t in constant pain.

However,  as things have become more and more complicated at home and Lizze’s health has continued to decline,  I haven’t been able to walk. As a result,  the pain has returned and with a vengeance. It’s simply not easy to get away when you have 3 kids with special needs and a spouse that is chronically ill.

My goal going into this year was to get a treadmill so that I can walk without having to leave the house.  The plan was to take care of that with income tax return. 

We all know how that went,  or rather where it all went.  In case you don’t,  the entire return had to go into replacing our stolen van.

My goal is to try and maybe get a treadmill at some point this summer so I haven’t given up yet 🙂 As the pain gets worse,  I’m more and more motivated to do whatever it’s takes to get relief.

Now I’m going on end those post and go see what hell is going on outside.  Someone is screaming.  This will be my first call to 911 allow week.  🙂

Goodnight all…….

**Thanks for reading**

       -Lost and Tired

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