I am feel­ing more and more like an old man. And I don’t just mean because I am walk­ing hob­bled over, groan­ing, and expe­ri­enc­ing more gas than ever. Going to the doc­tor has become one of the high­lights of the week for me. I get to leave my home — even travel a few towns […]

I had my annual phys­i­cal exam­i­na­tion with my pri­mary doc­tor Wednes­day after­noon. My blood pres­sure was high again (154/96), and it had been high two years ago when I vis­ited as well (you can see my annual isn’t actu­ally so). It had been some­thing like 124/90 back in 1997. I have heard the ques­tion sev­eral times […]

 I went to see my back doc­tor, Dr. Jef­frey Saal at SOAR: The Physi­a­try Med­ical Group, in Red­wood City, CA yes­ter­day. It had been three weeks after my sec­ond cor­ti­sone epidural, and two and a half weeks since I had started phys­i­cal ther­apy. I was eager to learn what he made of my progress and even more […]

When Jane Fonda said, “No pain, no gain,” she was only par­tially right. While one needs to push the lim­its to improve, and thus enter into a state of pain — or at least dis­com­fort — I am find­ing that it’s the pain that’s stop­ping me from improv­ing. I got up this morn­ing and decided […]

My favorite past-time dur­ing my recov­ery has become activ­ity obser­va­tion — watch­ing and read­ing about peo­ple run­ning, climb­ing, and gen­er­ally accom­plish­ing things physically. Seeing peo­ple make it to the top of a moun­tain or run a marathon — heck, even walk with­out a limp down the street — has become my porn. I lust after the abil­ity to […]

I’m sick of being in pain. I don’t want to go to sleep in pain. I don’t want to wake up in pain. And I don’t want to feel pain every time I move. But as I lie hear wish­ing the pain would stop, I real­ize that not being able to feel any pain would be […]