Today’s post is on a darker note. I know what you’re thinking “What could be darker than little David crying about not getting to play in the snow?”, and to a certain extent you’re right. Today we’re going to talk about pain.

Initially, the title was “About physical pain” because what I want to talk about is inherently physical, however, the psychological ramifications are there and are sometimes worse than the physical ones.

In April 2022 I had a small accident at the gym. While doing an overhead press I felt like I pulled a muscle in my back. In the following months, I had an aching pain in my back, like I had some painful bands of muscle that hurt whether I stood or sat.

After seeing several doctors, trying all sorts of medication, and doing physical therapy, nothing changed. Every doctor and physical therapist I went to had no idea what I had. By December, eight months after the incident, I gave up hope. Even more so because the pain fits the definition of “chronic pain”.

Back pain really took a toll on me psychologically. It was a type of pain I couldn’t ignore. I was not able to do the things I liked without the constant reminders, nagging me, telling me I should go lie down. I started romanticizing mundane things. I wanted to be able to sit comfortably reading a book, play on my Nintendo Switch, go to the beach, watch a movie on the couch, do sports, and travel with my girlfriend around the world. But I felt like I could not do any of this.

At the end of the day, my only solace was that I didn’t feel much pain while lying down. I started to question my future, whether I could live with being in pain all the time, and that if I couldn’t reliably get myself out of bed for things other than work, how could I one day hope to raise a child of my own. I can definitely say this was my lowest low.

At the end of December, my father asked me about the back pain. I basically told him I had given up hope and that I had to live with it. He told me I shouldn’t give up so easily and that I should try other doctors.

Having started my new job, with a fresh dose of health insurance, I went to a different doctor in January. He gave me his opinion (nothing new) but referred me to a different doctor, since his specialty was the knee (foreshadowing). On the same day (I was surprised too) I went to the back specialist. The appointment was quick, he basically said that since I’ve tried the common things I should go for something different and referred me to yet another doctor.

I was put off by things ping-pong too. But lo and behold, the third doctor told me she knew what my problem was, what it was caused by, and how we could fix it.

Eleven months have passed since that appointment. I still had my low lows, points where I thought that all the work we were doing was pointless and that I wouldn’t improve. But a few months back I did just that. I’m now able to sit here comfortably writing this blog post, I can also go read a book on the couch and I can again think about holding my future children close to me.

Mind you, I’m not cured. There are still days when the pain returns, and I still can’t do a lot of physical activity. But baby steps, I prefer to focus on the things I can do.

(…)

In October last year, after several months of pain, I felt the need to do some kind of sports. I decided to get back into running.

This was actually helping me, however, after overdoing it for one week, I got some knee pain. This knee pain only appeared when I ran, so I didn’t give much importance to it.

Despite not giving it importance, I still wanted to run, so I didn’t give it the appropriate recovery time, and I kept trying to run¹.

You can see where this is going, eventually, the pain started to become worse. And after a trip to Paris where I forced myself to walk through the pain, the pain stuck persistently.

Once again I went through a bunch of doctor appointments, two MRIs, and physical therapy and I even almost had surgery once. However, this time I didn’t have any magical doctor that discover what the problem was. More than a year has passed and the pain is still here.

However, learning from the previous experience, I’m confident that this can also turn out to be a success story. All I have to do is not lose focus of what I need to do, and believe that I can do it.

(…)

I’ve already gone on for too long for a Blogmas post. One day I want to tell this story in more detail, but today I just want to leave a bit of inspiration and hope for people going through similar experiences.

I can’t promise you that things are going to be like they were before, there’s a chance they won’t. But what I’m certain of is that they will only become better if we make them better if we try everything we can try, and if we believe that we can do it.

Talk to you tomorrow!

P.S. There are three things I want to add:

1. My journey towards recovery has been easier thanks to all the people of supported me along the way.
2. Don’t auto-diagnose yourself using the Internet.
3. When I look back at moments from the past year, I can hardly remember the exact moments where I felt pain. However, I can still remember the good moments I had with the people I love. Sometimes our brain has our back (no pun intended).