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 […]

I groaned as I moved because my back began to burn. I asked my 3 1/2 year-old daugh­ter, Cora­lyne, “Why does my back hurt?” She replied, “Because it does.” I think that’s the best sum­mary I’ve heard yet for why I have to endure con­stant pain. I keep try­ing to fig­ure out how this could […]

I have seen my phys­i­cal ther­a­pist for 4 times and have made some progress, How­ever, the pain still burns after a cou­ple of min­utes walk­ing, and only after 30 sec­onds of sit­ting. I learned that the area on the side of what I was call­ing my leg is actu­ally referred to as my but­tocks, at […]

I never thought I’d be accept­ing a Safe­way checker’s offer to get some­one to help me out with my bags. The other day, after mak­ing a run for milk, bread, and peanut but­ter to our nearby Safe­way gro­cery store and check­ing out, I real­ized I prob­a­bly shouldn’t carry the few items to the car. I […]

So, the MRI showed that my fifth lum­bar vertabra (L5), had an bit of the disc squeeze out (an extru­sion) onto the sci­atic nerve. The doc­tor explained that it was like hav­ing a piece of burn­ing hot coal sit­ting on my nerve.