Spinal Stenosis, Severe Osteoarthritis: Doc Advice: permanent lifestyle modification
For the interest of discussion, here's my TMI rundown.
After reaching a point in wildland fire where I couldn't run every day without patellar tendinitis, couldn't dig fireline or hike with a pack without persistent hip/lower back pain, and had real problems with where I stood in terms of career development and with how the agency handled the Iron 44 incident and the death of Andy Palmer, I went to nursing school. I hated nursing school, and really, I just didn't see myself doing that work. So, I struggled to support myself with a job as a dock hand for the MV Coho, the ferry service that sails between Victoria BC and Port Angeles, WA. I wasn't getting enough hours to make ends meet, and was using my savings to meet a monthly minimum of bills at about $1000/mo. I had interviews, but wasn't hired at the lib tech factory, westport shipyard, olympic ambulance service, and a funeral home. Actually the funeral home offered me an apprenticeship but I had a long discussion with somebody I trust in that business and decided the things I didn't like about nursing applied similarly to the mortuary business. I took as-needed coverage shifts as a bouncer at the R Bar in Port Angeles, but had difficulty with man-handling fighting women, and with the overall douchey atmosphere of the hip-hop dance club environment. It wasn't much money, and I wasn't on a schedule.
In a sort of pre-desperation move, I applied for an apprenticeship with the Laborers International Union of North America; even though I had persistent back and neck pain and was, at the time, about 50 lbs over a good weight for a laborer of my height. I went to their "training" which consisted of a sort of gauntlet of digging frozen mud with a pick axe, shoveling gravel and sand, moving sandbags, moving cinderblocks, moving bricks, building scaffold, etc. It became very clear to me, on the first day, that the back injury I had been dealing with since 2004/2005 was going to be a problem. By the 5th day, part of my lower back was numb to the touch and I was having a very difficult time with any movement and making a great effort to cover this so I could complete the "training" and get a job.
2 weeks later I had a job, but I still couldn't stand up straight without a lot of pain, and I still had the numbness.
I was running out of money, and unsure what I would do if I couldn't pay rent. A number of relatives were looking for work for me in their areas as well, and through word of mouth, an uncle I don't stay in touch with called me. He is a plastic and hand surgeon, and had been dealing with having to quit performing surgeries about 2 years ago due to the progress of spinal stenosis and arthritis and a loss of sensation in his right hand. He had his own office building, custom built, and his own practice. He's 54 and wasn't planning on this, and he was pretty bummed out. He ended up going through a process of alcohol rehab and counseling, etc. He convinced me to move to Central/southern Illinois and go to CDL school, over my objections to that plan, by telling me that he wanted to go drive trucks together; he knew people in the business and was sure we'd find a good operation to work for. He said he'd use his medical connections to deal with the problems in my knees, back and neck, and that we'd try to deal with this persistent depression/malaise I've had throughout this process of losing my home/skiing/career and everything sort of contracting and tanking in my life. I thought, OK; this guy must know people there and have some kind of connection to a decent operation, things are going terrible here, I'd better just go. My girlfriend said go, my mom said go, my friends said go. So I moved what I could with my back problem, I gave away almost everything I own to friends, neighbors, coworkers, goodwill, and my nursing school and left the rest in my apt.
I drove, painfully, from Washington to Salt Lake. Stayed with BobMC and gave my Bro Models to SFB for integration into the community. Then drove, painfully, to Illinois.
I was followed and pulled over by a drug cop outside of St. Louis and had a 45 minute long hassle with that douche. Then I got to my relatives' Effingham.
The whole several months were awkward. I was living in a bedroom in a household of rich midwesterners who have zero, zero idea what my life has been like. The whole idea that somebody would want to ski instead of work, wouldn't go to church, would be in middle adulthood without a wife and children...the whole thing is alien. They have Fox News on in the house at all times. They talk about the crazy liberals in California and the welfare queens and they have their guns ready for when Jesus comes. It's a place where getting a job is relatively easy, so people assume that if you have trouble finding work you must be a lazy douche or there's something very wrong with you. So I had that going for me.
Anyway, I saw a few doctors and a psychologist. The doctors, all 3, who are friends of my uncle and have no financial or legal reason to lie or sugar coat or give the official legal version....good physicians dealing honestly with me say that I have a congenital spinal stenosis and some of the most severe osteoarthritis they've seen in somebody my age along my spine where I hurt my back in playing hockey in 2004 and 2008 and my neck hitting a tree at solitude in 2005.
Talking with my uncle, who is aware of the medical status of everyone in my large family (8 aunts and uncles on that side, each with 3 or 4 kids), I've learned that we all have spinal stenosis and problems with arthritis. Another uncle had to retire from police work b/c he can't feel his hands...my hands tingle on a regular basis. I've also learned that we're all depressed. The majority of adults in my family have dealt with major depression, and out of 2 parents, 4 grandparents, and 8 great grandparents (14 total) there have been 5 suicides.
So, the back people say that I'm not getting better structurally and that I have to stop with the wear-and-tear. So no physical labor, no skiing, no hockey, no riding rigid-frame choppers...etc.
The psychologist says I'm doing remarkably well under the circumstances, but that I am basically dealing with an analog of addiction recovery...because for most of my life I've had that physical high of exercise and adrenaline and now my life is boring and flat and I have to learn to live without that really intense stimulation on a regular basis.
My uncle told his wife he was going to trucking school with me and she fucking lost it. L O S T it. So he didn't go. I heard the apocalyptic fight for hours in the other side of the house, and knew what was up, but he never had the manhood or courtesy to actually tell me "I'm not going to do this with you" ...the expectation when I was at this house was that I'd help out with their move and renovation, so I ended up spending a lot of time moving furniture with my bad back and being exceptionally sore and resentful about that. Turns out his great contact in the industry was just some local brother of his wife's friend who drives for Old Dominion. He worked for the company for 20 years and has a good job now. He didn't have shit to say to me except that all new jobs suck, the industry sucks now; it's better to go slow and fight with shippers and dispatchers than go fast and fight with tickets and accidents. He had no contacts to get a decent job, he just said all jobs for new hires suck, and good luck getting through it. Great.
I got my CDL, and got a conditional job offer with a local company with the idea that I could save some money for moving elsewhere by staying local... and headed off to 3 weeks of training. After I accepted the job, instead of saying "you can't stay here anymore" they just off-handedly said, one day, "so you'll have to come visit us sometime"...then they asked me to move my small pile of stuff into the basement of his abandoned office.
So since finishing training, I've been working 6 days a week and sleeping in the truck. I go to Wal Marts and Sams Clubs at night mostly, delivering groceries. I deal with angry, dim urban wal mart employees in St. Louis, Kentucky, Memphis, Arkansas...Indianapolis. I deal with retarded southern rural Wal Mart employees in a hundred little towns in the same territory. I deal with being treated like a newb by weird midwestern/southern NASCAR-loving wannabe bass fishermen truck drivers at the office I'm required to go through to take a shower or complete my paperwork. I barely get any sleep, because we can only run A/C in the trucks if it's over 90 outside, and these trucks get fucking hot in the sunlight if it's over 60. It's typically about 80-85 in the daytime here, so it's just unreal. The home base for the job is in Olney, IL. It's like the bad side of a big city only there's no big city...To make matters worse, there is some sort of boom around here and short-term housing is totally unavailable. There is a big prison here, and a lot of construction and truck drivers; so landlords are charging $500/mo for shitty apartments and single wide trailers and requiring one-year leases. This is in a town with houses for sale for $20,000. Practically speaking, I need to stay in this job for at least 6 months before I look for another job, because that's the sort of gold standard in trucking. Withstand the first shitty job for at least 6 months and you can get something better. So I stay in the truck 6 days a week and rent a room at the $30 meth motel (cash only!) for my mandatory 34-hour break each week.
It turns out I'm making about 500-600 a week for these 70 hour weeks, so it's about $5-6/hour. My mail is going to my uncle's place, and I have to call and get permission to come over and get the mail...or to go get something out of my pile of stuff. To go pay bills with my file box or to get another pair of socks from my bag of extra clothes I'm not taking in the truck.
Coping with Difficult Times
I went through a period of spinal stenosis, recurring urinary tract infections and general exhaustion. My uroligist put me on this natural anti-inflammatory, which is a compound of quercitin/bromelian: Natural Factors Quercetin Bioflavonoid Complex.
This helped a lot. It's not only a natural anti-infammatory, it helps with allergies and serves as a mild diuretic.
I also quit eating wheat, corn and cut way down on dairy and sugar. (I still start the day, with a small Coke or Arizona Iced Tea, but not much more than that.) Within three days I felt significantly better and have been infection free for over two years now. You can have potatoes and rice for carbs.
I do light stretching and yoga for the stenosis. It is much better.
Last bit I suggest: get back to ski country. You're obviously a mountain man. Tell your relatives that Jesus wants you to ski.
PS--avoid Fox News or you'll develop high blood pressure.