My name is Chris and I wanted to start this blog in order to tell my personal story as well as hear from others that are dealing with similar, or even worse. I am about to turn 48 years old and have been dealing with chronic pain for years.
When I was young I was very overweight (as was my family), but once I hit high school I really didn’t want to be overweight any longer. My dad got me into weight lifting, and I really started to like the results I was seeing. I also found out fairly early on how important diet was. I now know diet is extremely important. Not only for gaining muscle but it’s the most important part of losing fat.
I also started playing football once I started High School. Because of my size the two positions I played were offensive and defensive line. I loved the games but absolutely hated practice. I had my first taste of surgery at 17 years old when they had to do surgery on my L5 S1 disc in my lumbar spine. We were instructed by my football coach to come down and hit a chair (with our butt) when we were performing squats. After doing that more times than I can remember I started having shooting pain down the back of my left leg.
My dad who had already undergone more than one back surgery had a feeling right away what the problem was. So I was taken to a very well-known surgeon and had my first MRI scan. What’s the results were in I was scheduled for surgery during the summer of my junior to senior year.
After graduating high school I went to work as an apprentice doing AC work. On the way home from work one day I was hit head on going 55 mph on my motorcycle. God was certainly looking out for me that day because I was severely injured but still alive. I shattered both knees that day, tore multiple ligaments and tendons. Had tons of road rash, and hurt my back once again. But I was grateful to be alive.
Shortly following the accident I had my first of four knee surgeries. My right leg was the worst so they did that one first immediately followed by my left. It definitely was interesting trying to walk with both legs locked straight in braces!
In the following years I got married, started a family and went to the Law Enforcement Academy for Corrections. During a Training Day I injured my knee which required a third surgery. Not exactly sure what happened but within 6 months of that surgery I was facing yet another knee surgery, for my now fourth.
I was involved in a car accident where I was not wearing my seat belt and had the airbag go off in my face causing my C5 disc to bulge significantly. I started having problems with my arm going numb, neck pain and headaches. I was able to get nerve blocks which worked very well for me at the time. I did not even consider neck surgery because it truly scared me.
I left the Sheriff’s Office after 10 years due to personal reasons. I really started hitting the gym hard at this point in my life and was making very good progress. One day in the gym as I was sitting up from doing dumbbell military press, it felt like someone hit me in the back with a cinder block. I immediately went to my knees and had the breath knocked out of me. After seeing a surgeon and having another MRI we saw that I had two more discs in my back that were herniated. This required my second lumbar back surgery which was a laminectomy. This was in 2010.
2010 was also one of the best years of my life because I met my current wife who is truly my soulmate and my angel. Following that back surgery I was doing very well until 2016. In August of 2016 by appendix rupture and I had sepsis for just over two weeks. They were certain that I was not going to survive that. But again God was looking out for me and had other plans. I distinctly remember about 6 months after the surgery I looked at my wife and told her that I felt like I had aged 20 years in the last 6 months.
I brought this up to my surgeon that did the open appendectomy and he said that I fit the criteria for something called post sepsis syndrome. He stated that we still truly don’t understand what happens to the human body that is subject to that for extended periods of time. He told me that he had no idea what the future of my health was going to be. My early 2017 my back took a very bad turn for the worst. I did not have health insurance at the time and had to wait to be seen by a surgeon.
By the time I was able to obtain health insurance and get to a surgeon for an MRI I could not stand up straight any longer. Once he saw the MRI he immediately scheduled me for surgery to fuse L2 through L5 in my lumbar spine with titanium hardware. While I was recovering from this surgery the carpal tunnel that I had dealt with for many years got so bad I could not sleep at night any longer due to the pain. So in 2021 I had double carpal tunnel surgery.
Since 2017 I have also completely torn my left bicep tendon from my shoulder. My right bicep tendon is partially torn. Both rotator cuffs are partially torn. As well as constantly pulling and tearing muscles. This has all been attributed to post sepsis syndrome. At this time I have not had surgery on any of these injuries as I’ve had more serious issues arise.
In 2021 my migraines, back and legs got so bad that I had to quit my job and was unable to work. In 2023 I injured my back once again by simply standing up and turning around. I am currently working with a surgeon to find out exactly what happened and what we can do to try to fix it. The pain that I have been in for a while now is absolutely unbearable even though I have been seeing pain management for years.
Most people assume that pain management makes everything better and takes your pain away and nothing could be further from the truth. I feel it takes the edge off of the pain, but that’s it. There are more days that I don’t want to get out of bed because I don’t want to go through another day feeling like this. But in all this time I have never stopped working out, exercising and dieting. I get judged by a lot of people when they see me and the shape I am in that there is no way that this much stuff could be wrong with me. And again nothing is further from the truth.
I have so much more that I will be elaborating on in future posts. I am not the most computer savvy guy so it may take me a little while to get up and going. But I would love to hear from others and your experiences, struggles and achievements. I plan on having a training section showing different ways to train with various injuries. I also want to help motivate each other to keep pushing. I feel as a collective unit that we can help each other, give each other advice and find a way to get through this life living in chronic pain. So please feel free to leave a comment or contact me