herniated disc | Big Mike's World

What’s been going on with Big Mike? Well that is a loaded question….

Some of you may remember back towards the end of the summer, The Life Of Jamie caused me to break my ankle. I still say she put that rock under my foot to make me fall. I still won the competition though……

Anyway, I tried to use my ankle the way it was after I gave it time to heal but didn’t like how it was coming a long.

I just completed physical therapy on my ankle, YAY! It is not what it used to be but there was not much else the therapist could do to bring me along. Outside of the normal movement therapy and electrical stimulus, she utilized this weird new thing I have never heard of, ASTYM. Basically its a tool assisted tissue massage. It was great in the ending weeks of my treatment. I think it really helped. My only drawback to having this done was that I have very sensitive feet. So when the tools had to be dragged across the sole of my foot…..it wasn’t pretty. But I’m still glad I had it done. Currently I’m still waiting for the perfect day to road test my healed paw.

Of course after my therapy ended I got really sick again. Stupid stomach virus, the Norovirus. After a week of that nonsense and losing 15 lbs I am now in physical therapy for my neck. Yup, it’s bothering me again. I’m going down the list of things I can do for it besides surgery. Unfortunately, surgery is the next and last thing on this list. I, we, all know this therapy won’t cure my ailing neck but so far it has loosened my neck muscles as well as my pectorals which is causing a more relaxed sensation in the damaged area. The stretches and movements I’m doing make it seem as if I’ve never used my neck properly to begin with. I’m happy with the results so far……

After therapy today I went to the store and bought myself a juicer! Mmmmmmmm goodness! My first concoction was a pear, lime and lemon juice. Wow, was it amazing! Tomorrow I have a carrot, apple, parsley, spinach juice on tap.

Who’s a juicer out there? Share some of your favorite ingredient combos with me please. I am hooked on the juice.

So today is the day after my birthday and I figured why not start another 90 day go around of P90X to fight the effects of aging. Well, that was the idea anyway. After a few hundred pushups, a hundred pullups and however may situps I did with the Ab Ripper X my body began to hate me. The first thing to really get me was my neck….

Yeah, that is me in this x-ray. My poor ole neck is a little out of whack. I actually have two herniated discs that, well, never healed. This is a fairly old injury. It bothers me from time to time. When it gets really bad my left arm goes a little numb and I get sharp shooting pains from my neck to my fingers and down my back. I have a decrease in strength in my left side which makes working out interesting. About 9 months ago I had an epidural steroid injection in my neck. It worked for almost 2 months. What is a guy supposed to do? Some Motrin and a heating pad is basically all I can do while avoiding surgery.

Then all of a sudden my lower back started to hurt. I don’t get it but I blame the situps for that pain. It has to be, right? And out of nowhere my left foot started to hurt and I didn’t even run today.

I have stress fractures in both of my feet. The same bone (5th metatarsal), in the same place, happened a year apart from each other to the day. I always found that weird. I never thought such a little bone could cause so much pain. They still hurt when I run. But the good thing is, I can tell when it is going to rain….. 🙂

In high school I had an umbilical hernia. That sucker hurt! I ignored it for a while. I still remember how it happened. I was doing squats and just couldn’t come up. Stupid me kept lifting then went for a run. After the run, I had blood on my shirt where my belly button is. I looked but didn’t see where it was coming from. It wasn’t flowing so it must not be that bad. A few days passed and I start to smell this foul odor. It was embarrassing because I was at that age where I was very aware of the girls around. I had no idea if they could smell what I smelled too. It almost smelled like I pooped my pants (not that I have done that). But I knew if the aftermath in the bathroom could peel wallpaper, this is probably not a good thing to have linger around while trying to attract a girl. I think what made me speak up was after I couldn’t bend over anymore and the smell got worse. If you don’t know what an umbilical hernia is, it is a tear in the stomach muscles. If it’s bad enough it will allow your intestines to pop out . Luckily they didn’t come bursting out like Sigourney Weaver’s worst nightmare. That whole episode almost made me miss my senior year playing lacrosse.

Oh lacrosse, my weakness and sport of choice. I had more injuries from that than anything else I have ever done. I had to have leg surgery because of it. I played defense and was a very active person on the field in terms of defending my goal. I would jump in front of shots and get hit in various places that didn’t have pads. I was repeatedly hit in my right shin by shots game after game. I was hit so many times it damaged a major vein in my leg. It looked like the Incredible Hulk trying to escape from my shin. Not that you want to know but I had to have 6 ft. of vein stripped from my right leg because of it.

Well, 5-6 moths ago I had another surgery on the same leg to fix another bad vein. Thankfully technology has advanced and I was only down and out for a few days. I just had another surgery 3 weeks ago, this time on my left leg. It turns out I just have bad valves in the major veins in my legs that don’t shut off the blood from flowing. The pain during my recovery from these surgeries kinda sucks. The actual vein was closed off from my shin to my groin. And as the vein accepts this being done, it feels like a bad groin pull with each step. Which makes running so much fun!

Well there are a few things no one ever wanted to know about me. But I shared them away.

If you are having a bad day at the gym just think of my issues and finish strong while being thankful that you are not me.