Matthew
04-03-2012, 03:11 PM
A post that Coach Sonnon made on his blog the other day got me to thinking about growing younger.
When I was a young man in my early twenties I suffered a back injury.
I didn't think much of it at the time. It hurt. It healed. Whatever.
Every once in a while I would do something to aggravate it and I would be in pain for a few days to a week but it would pass and I would forget about it until next time.
As I neared the end of my thirties the injury that I ignored all of those years came back to haunt me hard. It started slowly and grew worse. I ignored it. I lived with it. I compensated for it. Eventually it would be ignored no longer and it blossomed into a full fledged disability. I was in excruciating pain twenty four hours a day and all but lost the use of my left leg. Standing face on to a mirror I could easily see the unnatural curve of my spine. The odd twisting of of my hips. I was a twisted and crippled old man at the age of forty-two.
Enter Vicodin dependency.
The Vicodin kept the pain to a tolerable level but when it wore off the rebound pain was worse than before. Only more Vicodin could knock it back.
What I didn't realize was that although the Vicodin made the pain tolerable it made me, as a person, intolerable. Of course I had no idea. I was in pain and on drugs and the combination of those two things makes it very difficult to see things clearly.
I hit rock bottom one night when the pain came in crashing waves of spasm. I spent the night curled up in the fetal position in screaming agony stuffing hands full of Vicodin into my mouth to no avail. I never called for an ambulance because in my drugged out haze all I could think of was sleep and that If I called 911 the ordeal would have me up all night and I would never get to sleep. It never occurred to me that they might have done something to relieve my suffering and allow me to sleep.
Somehow I made it through the night without overdosing and managed to get to an orthopedic surgeon within a day or two. He didn't take me seriously. I pleaded with him to do something but he treated me like a junkie begging for drugs and not like a man desperately afraid of another night of torture.
Finally I went back to my regular doctor and he sent me to a specialist who would administer a cortisone injection directly into the damaged discs. After the first round of shots I thought I was miraculously cured. I had forgotten what it was like to be pain free and I was ecstatic. After a week or two the pain began to return but by then it was time for my second round of shots. It lasted a bit longer this time. After the third round of shots the pain subsided long enough for me to begin some meaningful rehabilitation. That's when I discovered yoga and began my road to full recovery.
I still have an injury. It will always be there and will never go away but it no longer defines me. I will always have some residual pain but it has been reduced to background noise. Most times I don't even notice it. Pain meds are a thing of the past. Thank God for that!
I guess the point of this long ramble is that I feel, no I AM younger today, at forty-nine, than I was ten years ago. I know this because I can move, I can play, I can fight, like I did when I was twenty and like I couldn't do when I was forty.
Now that I've discovered Tacfit I continue to grow younger. Not only am I as agile now as I was in my twenties, I am stronger too. I'm more fit. I have more energy. I am mentally and physically healthier than I was in my so called “youth”.
I imagine that someday age might catch up with me but at this rate I think I'm going to outrun it for a good long time. If things keep going as they are I expect that I will be very much alive when I die.
When I was a young man in my early twenties I suffered a back injury.
I didn't think much of it at the time. It hurt. It healed. Whatever.
Every once in a while I would do something to aggravate it and I would be in pain for a few days to a week but it would pass and I would forget about it until next time.
As I neared the end of my thirties the injury that I ignored all of those years came back to haunt me hard. It started slowly and grew worse. I ignored it. I lived with it. I compensated for it. Eventually it would be ignored no longer and it blossomed into a full fledged disability. I was in excruciating pain twenty four hours a day and all but lost the use of my left leg. Standing face on to a mirror I could easily see the unnatural curve of my spine. The odd twisting of of my hips. I was a twisted and crippled old man at the age of forty-two.
Enter Vicodin dependency.
The Vicodin kept the pain to a tolerable level but when it wore off the rebound pain was worse than before. Only more Vicodin could knock it back.
What I didn't realize was that although the Vicodin made the pain tolerable it made me, as a person, intolerable. Of course I had no idea. I was in pain and on drugs and the combination of those two things makes it very difficult to see things clearly.
I hit rock bottom one night when the pain came in crashing waves of spasm. I spent the night curled up in the fetal position in screaming agony stuffing hands full of Vicodin into my mouth to no avail. I never called for an ambulance because in my drugged out haze all I could think of was sleep and that If I called 911 the ordeal would have me up all night and I would never get to sleep. It never occurred to me that they might have done something to relieve my suffering and allow me to sleep.
Somehow I made it through the night without overdosing and managed to get to an orthopedic surgeon within a day or two. He didn't take me seriously. I pleaded with him to do something but he treated me like a junkie begging for drugs and not like a man desperately afraid of another night of torture.
Finally I went back to my regular doctor and he sent me to a specialist who would administer a cortisone injection directly into the damaged discs. After the first round of shots I thought I was miraculously cured. I had forgotten what it was like to be pain free and I was ecstatic. After a week or two the pain began to return but by then it was time for my second round of shots. It lasted a bit longer this time. After the third round of shots the pain subsided long enough for me to begin some meaningful rehabilitation. That's when I discovered yoga and began my road to full recovery.
I still have an injury. It will always be there and will never go away but it no longer defines me. I will always have some residual pain but it has been reduced to background noise. Most times I don't even notice it. Pain meds are a thing of the past. Thank God for that!
I guess the point of this long ramble is that I feel, no I AM younger today, at forty-nine, than I was ten years ago. I know this because I can move, I can play, I can fight, like I did when I was twenty and like I couldn't do when I was forty.
Now that I've discovered Tacfit I continue to grow younger. Not only am I as agile now as I was in my twenties, I am stronger too. I'm more fit. I have more energy. I am mentally and physically healthier than I was in my so called “youth”.
I imagine that someday age might catch up with me but at this rate I think I'm going to outrun it for a good long time. If things keep going as they are I expect that I will be very much alive when I die.