Joe’s BodyBlog

OK I have a love hate relationship with Cardio. When I had good knees I could do cardio all the time and really push myself hard burning lots of calories and fat. Now, since I have had two knee surgeries and back surgery, cardio is more of a challenge to me. I used to be able to run on the treadmill and do HIIT work that I programmed into my treadmill and it would kik my butt, but I could always do it. Now, I am lucky to be able to do any treadmill work. I have moved over to the elliptical trainer and stair master at the gym, occasionaly the bike. I like them but I don’t feel I am getting the burn that I did when I ran. So the love of cardio is just doing it and pushing myself hard. The hate is the pain I have no in my knee after I do it. This is not stopping me though, I just am doing it smater by using equipment that won’t bother me or cause me pain. I am trying to add some different work like hitting a heavy bag since boxing is such a great cardio workout and I can do that at home, my treadmill is also at home, the other equipment is at the gym and having to do cardio only at the gym sucks because I have cardio days, where that is all I do. I think my next investment will be a heavy bag and some gloves, so I can start trying some boxing for cardio…

So it was a sobering weekend looking at my measurements and checking my weight. I realized that over the past month my diet has been horrible, but I put on 10 lbs (which I am sure is FAT) and gained 2.5 inches back in my stomach. I had my stomach down to under 34 inches before I started eating so much junk, so if there was ever a sign to clean up the diet, here it is. I am glad I did the measurements though they really help me to focus. It was hard to do some of them as I am alone, and didn’t have anyone to help me, so accuracy is probably off. But I did the best I could.

So the past two plus years have been nothing but injury, surgery and recovery for me. I have not been able to make any real progress because I have been so injury prone. Add to this the fact that my marriage fell apart last year before my back surgery and I have been a mess both physically and emotionally. But the times they are a changing!

One of the main changes is that I am done with PT. Considering how bad off I was a few months ago, my progress has been fantastic. In fact when I went in last Monday my Therapist told me he almost called me to tell me I was done, but decided he wanted to test me on more dynamic movements before he released me from PT. That was pretty cool, because I felt like I was ready to be released. Nice to know I do have some idea where my body is in regards to my health.

Now for the next phase of my recovery. I have lost all discipline over the past 5-6 months during the recovery, my workouts have been consistent in that I did them 4-5 days per week for my PT, but my eating and timing have been horrible. My diet has been “what ever is available and makes me feel good” for food. I had lost a lot of weight and muscle mass during my post op recovery, and now I feel the effects of it all. So I am cleaning out the pantry and starting clean again. This will make a big difference for me not just in my diet but will help me with my over all discipline. It will be a little hard because the NHL Playoffs will be starting in April and I will have tickets, going to the games is not what I would consider healthy eating, especially with all the BEER!

For my workouts, I have decided to try a modified version of Body For Life. I will do the BFL workouts for the most part, but since I have to concentrate on my core, that is how I will modify it. I am doing this because BFL makes you plan out your workouts and meals, and doing this will help me to regain my discipline. I feel this is very important for me to get my overall health back. I am also hoping that by putting some discipline back into my life I will conquer my insomnia. During my recovery from my back surgery, I was in so much pain, sleeping was very hard. I have since had terrible sleep habits which doesn’t help with over all health, and even with the medication they gave me I am still not sleeping well. When I told my doctors about this they felt it was more important that I work to get good sleep habits again then to rely on medication, and I agree.

The new plan will start on Monday. I am going to give myself the next couple of days to get things ready and to prep myself for my new journey. My goals are very simple; get healthy again, eat right, sleep right, and stay consistent. Progress pictures and measurements will be posted as well so I can track myself.

Wish me luck!

So it has been a few months since I posted but life is finally starting to get better for me. My Physical Therapy has made me strong enough to do more and now my Chiropractor has started adjusting me again. My pain is almost gone! The stronger I get the less pain I have! So I just keep working harder and harder to get stronger.

My Physical Therapist has given me the green light to start wokring out regularly and mixing my back/core workouts into the mix every 2-3 days. This makes me very happy to know I can start lifting more. So I have to set up another new program for myself, so that will be fun to figure out. The Yoga has really helped a lot. I went to a teacher and really learned how to help myself by doing the poses correctly and understanding my body more, so now I just need to work hard to get things going again, and I am!

So today I go see my surgeon for my 3 month follow up to my surgery. Since I am having issues he has never seen before he will be very happy to hear that my Physical Therapist and I have had a break through as of last week. The muscle issues have been having have nothing to do with my neurological issues of my surgery, but instead have to do with the muscles just freaking out on both sides of my back. So how did we come to this conclusion? After 3 very painful rounds of Facet Joint injections (Facet Joints are the joints of the spine) and only minimal improvement except when I got muscle trigger point injections of muscle relaxers did my PT decide to try a different movement for my hips. Since my muscles are locked so my hips are about 12-15 degrees off level from right to left, he had to come up with moves or stretches just for my hip and just to even out the muscle imbalance from right to left to get my hips level again. Usually when this used to happen, my Chiropractor would just adjust me a couple of times and remind me to keep my core strong, blah blah blah… Now he can’t do that since I had surgery, so this stretch is very important to get my hips lose and moving again. I do it 4 times per day for 15 reps. So here is the magic, I stand with my left shoulder facing a wall, a few feet away, then I lean my body against the wall so my body is at an angle to it. This reduces strain/forces on my left side, then I push my hip on the right side and try to get my left side as close to the wall as I can. That is it. For those of you who haven’t had back surgery this is nothing, but for me this was a huge break through. I am starting to move normally again. My walk is getting better, the pain is decreasing and I am spasming much less. All from 1 stretch and my PT listening to me and what my body is telling us. It will be interesting what my surgeon says about this break through, especially since he felt it was muscular the whole time but was mystified by it.

My 40th was last week, and yet here I sit eating leftover birthday cake and watch my goals slip by… I don’t feel bad because I missed my goal, especially  considering my surgery and all, but what I feel bad about is all 3 surgeries I have had over the past few years could have been prevented. All the injuries occurred in the gym. So this tells me a lot about how either I was working out or how my body had so many weaknesses. Now, I have a much slower, different perspective about my rehab and PT and then about when I get released to work out in the gym with weights. Right now I still am at my post surgery limit of no more then 10lbs. So it will be a long time before I am back in the weight room…..

So I just realized i haven’t posted to my Bodyspace blog in 2 months. Amazing what can happen in that time frame. Basically I am a mess, both Physically and a little Emotionally because I had a weird post surgical complication that my surgeon has NEVER seen in 14 years of doing Micro Discectomies. So lucky me I get to be the 1 in 15,000 to have this issue. What happened is that apparently I am a person who develops scare tissue at a pretty bad rate after surgery. It happened after both my knee surgeries and now tih my back. I also had some surgery induced arthritis that was causing problems. So what ended up happening is that the scare tissue and the arthritis were causing the Facet Joints (the joints in your spine that make it flex forward and backward) to not be able to move correctly. Somehow, we are not sure how, although I think I know what happened, I moved incorrectly and it started this chain reaction of spams and intense pain in my back. Worse then I had before surgery, but it wasn’t nerve pain, it was all muscular. They did a post surgery MRI and it confirmed that the scare tissue was in the Facet Joint were it shouldn’t have been. What happens when your Facet Joints can’t move correctly? Lots of bad stuff like I was seeing. The muscles attach to those joints so the erector spine muscles wouldn’t stop spasm for weeks. they tried Oral medication first (Predisone and Muscle Relaxant) to no help. Then they brought out the big needles! They give me spinal injections from L5/L4 all the way up to L2 in the Facet Joints which help out a lot. They also gave me a muscle block along with each joint injection. It was amazing, I was starting to feel like I was back on the right course again, which is how I felt at 6 weeks. At that time I was walking 5 miles a day, doing basic stretches and good take care of myself except doing some minor chores around the house, which involved lifting anything more then 10 lbs. After this incident happened, I was so bad off I could hard stand, my hips were at a 25-30 degree angle from right to left. It was just horrible. The pin was unbearable and I almost told my doctor that I felt he screwed something up with my spine and I wanted some serious help. Cooler head prevailed and the shots did a lot to relieve the pain and get my going again. The following week I had a second round of shots and muscles blocks to make sure I was on the right track, this time they also added an epidural at S1/L5 since I do have a herniated disk there as well. I felt like I was on top of the world, I was back to rehabbing myself and working out of this mess. So two days after my second rounds of shots, I was allowed to get back with my PT and starting working out again. Very minor stuff mind you, but hell I was working out that is all that mattered to me. That meant through slow build up I would eventually see the inside of a gym for working out. Barbells, dumbbells, leg presses have been calling out to me… but I know I am weeks/months away from being able to start on free weights like that again. So, I went to my gym to do my simple PT and then jump in the jacuzzi after a nice 1/4 mile walk in the pool. all simple things I thought I was allowed to do. Here is the problem, my home program and what PT is doing with me are not the same. This had me very confused and I didn’t realize the difference until after I decided to go to the gym 2 days in a row, after I had been to my PT one day prior, so therefore 3 days of intense work for someone at my time frame of recovery, and couldn’t move the night of the 3rd day or for the next two days afterwords. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what I did wrong. I was follwoing my program, How did I overdue it?? Lucky for me I had a follow up with my MD the Monday after all of this. Basically he railed me for pushing it to hard, got pissed and wanted to kill my PT (my MD is a friend of mine, we go to Carolina Hurricanes Hockey Games together, drink beers etc), until he started asking me about my "official" program and we deduced that I was at fault for these issues. Man did this suck… So he shot me up again with Muscle blocks and some pain meds to get me over this "acute" issue. The next day I went to see my PT and explained what I did and he scolded me just a little, because he realized it was his responsibility to tell me what he is doing in the office with me is to see when I am ready to add more work or change my program. Until he gives me a new workout sheet I am not to deviate from my program (which also happens to be the same as the one my MD wants me to follow). So all of this happened last weekend (11/8) and now I am a week away from it. Things are getting better. I am feeling ok, sleeping a lot and my endurance sucks, but that is all part of the recovery process. Oh and what did I do that started me down this nasty course? I went to the grocery store and forget to get a cart and grabbed a basket and put a half gallon of Milk and OJ in it and felt my back spasm just a little bit, but I was close to the counter so I didn’t worry about it, I did at least use a cart to get the rest of the stuff to the car. Damage was already done!!

Moral of the story, take recovery slowly and don’t get impatient!

Hey everyone, the surgery went well and I am doing great. They removed about 8 mm’s of disk that was pushing on my nerve root and causing me lots of pain. They said it can take up to 1 year for the nerve to heal and that it takes about 1 mm a week to heal. So considering the pain was down my main nerve going down my right leg, I think the full healing process for the nerve will indeed take 1 year. I haven’t taken any pain meds or muscle relaxers in over 1 week, which makes me feel fantastic! I am sleeping much better now, and I have been sleeping through the night, which I don’t think I have done in about 1 year. I am going to be on disability until mid October, but that is OK since I can’t sit at the computer for more than 10-15 minutes at a clip anyhow. As a database person that means I can’t really work. They have me walking and stretching for my PT right now. I walk 3 miles a day which I worked myself up to over the past two weeks. Initially it caused some muscle spasms, but now since I am stretching I am doing much better. My stretching is very basic, forward and backwards bends, laying down knees to the chest, but it works, I can feel myself getting loser every day! I am not aloud to lift more then 10 lbs at a time, which means I am slowly doing household chores. Can’t even lift my vacuum  cleaner to clean my house, but my friends, neighbors, family and my wife and her family are all helping me out there. I will be on that lifting restriction for at least the next 5-6 weeks. So based on this, I am getting lots of reading done. I have finished 4 of the 7 Harry Potter books that I was back logged on, I am a late Harry Potter fan, so I am on Year 7 now. That will be done by the end of the week. Well my computer time is up, time to go stretch….

OK So I am both happy and sad that my surgery is this week. I don’t feel like going through another surgery, but I am in so much pain that at the same time I am looking forward to it. I have learned a lot about the procedure and the recovery over the past couple of weeks and while recovering from surgery is never fun, this whole process is reminding me why I need to stay on top of my fitness. What I don’t understand is how my disk herniated 4 mm over 9-10 months. Did I do something to make it worse? Was it golf? Some of my stretches? Did I push myself too hard to get back in the gym and workout? These questions are things I will need to think about during my recovery for when I start my PT. My surgeon told me that he isn’t going to send me to a PT, outside of the first couple of sessions because I described to him everything I had already been doing for exercising and he said I was doing the right things, especially the core workouts.

Something tells me I have a huge tendency to push myself to hard and I am not building the proper foundation for my strength training and that is why I keep hurting myself. I am going to find a good trainer to help me get on the right track when I am cleared to workout again. My brother had sent my nephew to a guy, not sure what his specialty is called, but this guy has been helping my nephew a lot with his post ACL recovery since he is playing Division 1 Lacrosse in college. Anyhow, I need to find a guy like that, someone who can point out my body’s weaknesses and imbalances so I can properly build the foundation I need to help myself to get stronger. 3 surgeries over the past 4 years all from injuring myself while working out are telling me I need help.  So  that will be my next goal post surgery, get my body the proper work to rebuild my foundation of strength and flexibility.

I have been to 2 Neurosurgeons this week and my impending back surgery is now confirmed. So over the past 4 years I have had 4 surgeries and only 1, my Lasik was cosmetic. All of them have been orthopedic in nature. The fact that I am having a Neurosurgeon do this surgery is because of everything I have read about disk surgery and from people I know who have had it done, and they all said that this is to be done by a Neuro. I am not messing around with my back and spinal column and my nerves on this one. It looks like the month of September will be a tough one for me, they recommend 3-4 weeks off for this, then I will be slowly working my way back. At least this is a "smaller" procedure then what back surgery used to be in the past, instead of making a huge open cut in my back, they will make a much smaller incision through the muscle (instead of stripping the muscle away from my spine) to get to the disk that is pushing on my spinal nerve. They will cut away the portion of the disk to lessen the pressure on my nerve. They said that almost immediately when I wake up I will feel less pain in my back and less pain in my leg. It will take the nerve some time to heal from the disk damage, but there is a pretty high success rate for this surgery helping with my pain and my issue.

The recovery is going to suck though. I can’t ride in a car for two weeks post-op, so that means I will be house bound except for my ride home after the surgery. With my separation from my wife, that puts me in a bind to have some help around the house, so that issue needs to be worked out. Then I will still have about 4-6 weeks more of post op recovery to deal with, mostly PT and trying to get back to work. Thank god I ave good family (my side) and friends, other wise I would be screwed, ordering take out just to get some hot meals…

My biggest issue is going to be to eat clean as much as possible initially after the surgery. I have a tendency to a little lazy and decide to eat junk. At this pace I won’t get my abs by 40, but damn it surgery and all, I am going to get close. Once I recover from this, I am going to be single so I have to look good and feel good so I can see what life is like…………. ugh .