Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
I’m going to physiotherapy. I’m going to massage therapy. I’m doing my stretches and exercises. And I’m still dealing with leg pain that gets triggered from standing. Until a week ago I could just sit for 5 minutes and the pain would fade. I could walk on the treadmill or up/downhill, and even run, and felt no pain… but after 3-5 minutes standing in the shower, shaving & brushing my teeth, or making food, the pain returned.
For the last week and a half, the pain has crept into activities where I’m mobile and moving, and then has been slow to subside, even when I sit.
So, I’ll keep doing my stretches, keep going to physio and massage, and even seek more medical help. What I’m also going to do is give my legs more rest. I’ve been pushing hard, I’ve seen amazing gains… but my body is telling me that it needs a break. I’m going to go easy on my legs, and give this issue some time to heal.
A couple years ago I had a herniated disk. The herniation pinched a nerve going into my left arm and that’s where I felt the pain… a pain that seemed ever present. I was on very strong meds. I supplemented these with legal but more recreational drugs. The prescription ones made the pain tolerable. The recreational ones helped me move the pain from my brain to my arm, to relieve the anguish of being in constant pain.
The timing went like this: In early February the pain started. In early March I got the preliminary diagnosis, and was prescribed medication. I visited my parents for March break and the day I arrived my dad had a stroke. I spent the next 12 days in agony, helping my family deal with dad hospitalized, while making physio appointments and getting IMS treatment for the constant physical agony I was in.
When I got home from that trip I got prescribed much harder drugs. I was in constant pain. One day in late April I was driving to school and I realized that I shouldn’t be driving, my meds were too strong. This hit me hard, I instantly made the connection that if I shouldn’t be driving, I shouldn’t be in charge of a school. I was able to make a doctor’s appointment the very next day, and I got a letter to take some time off. That day I also got a phone call to say that I better get home to my parents. My dad, who never left the hospital since his stroke, had taken a turn for the worse and probably wouldn’t make it through the night.
I said a final goodbye to him over the phone before getting on a late night flight. I’ll never know if he heard those words. I spent another 10 or so days back with my mom, cleaning up things my dad left behind that needed to get cleaned up. At this point I was also supplementing my prescription.
I hit a low point after I returned home. One unusually painful night I had to ask my daughter to drive me to the dispensary… a dad asking his daughter to drive him to get his fix. That’s not really what it was, but it felt like that to me. Loser dad who can barely get himself from bed to the couch, and didn’t have the wherewithal to even get dinner ready for a wife working full time, having to get his daughter to drive him to buy drugs. Not a proud moment for me.
Within a couple more weeks, the inflammation reduced, the nerve wasn’t compressed as much, and I was able to get back to only a mild prescription… And then back to work after 5 or 6 weeks off. The whole experience was awful physically and emotionally, but it had an end! I knew it had an end, but sometimes at my worst I questioned it. I wondered, if this is life from now on, could I go on?
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My sister had an MS diagnosis for over 25 years. Slowly and incrementally she lost feeling in her legs. They were numb to the touch, but she felt pain, searing sciatica pain. Shooting pain that ran down her legs. For the most part things would stay static, then she’d have a small episode, and she’d lose a bit more feeling, be a bit less mobile, but the pain persisted. About 4-5 years ago the episodes escalated, and her mobility declined much more quickly. And still the pain.
Recently it became clear that she’d be moving from a walker to a wheelchair. A week ago she had six falls (only 6 that I’m aware of in that week). She would cut her finger cutting vegetables, and not feel it, only becoming aware of the injury from seeing the blood. And despite this numbness and lack of feeling, there was still the never-ending sciatica pain.
On Monday her daily pain was ended. 56 years old. Half of that time in incrementally greater pain. I can honestly say that she was stronger than me.
I’ll miss her dearly, and yet I’m thankful she isn’t going to suffer any more.
Sharon Silvera Truss May 15, 1969 – November 24, 2025
I’ve been seeing the same massage therapist for over 25 years. It’s amazing to have someone who totally understands just what my body needs for pain relief. Days like today, I had a couple sore spots I had her focus on, but most days she just digs right in with her elbows and works her magic, exactly where I need it.
For some people massages are enjoyed for relaxation. For me they it’s all about the therapy. My first decade going to her was agony, followed by incredible relief for my back pain. My back pain is much more manageable now, and I know that regular massage has been an essential part of my improvements.
About 5 years in she admitted that she used to hate when I came in because it was so demanding, how deep she had to go. “You were by far one of my three toughest clients and the other two were in severe car accidents,” she told me.
Now she occasionally shares me as an example. If someone is getting a hard massage and asks if she goes harder on someone, she says, ‘I have this one guy that will fall asleep when I’m going harder than this!’ And I do (usually) fall asleep. She knows she’s going deep enough because despite being asleep, I have to change my breathing to withstand the pressure.
Asleep or not, massage day is heaven for me. I come out with zero back pack and it lasts for a few hours. A few moments in my life where I’m not aware of my back, it doesn’t require my attention. Massage days are wonderful!
Yesterday I tweaked my back. It was not a full crash, but the pain was intense and my mid left back was giving me both pain and warning signals that told me I was in for a world of discomfort in the coming days. However, I have house guests, and Servaas Mes is a somatics expert.
What is somatics?
Somatics is studying the body from a first person perspective. Medicine is from the third person. It is about mobilizing awareness: both movement and emotions.
It is about moving from movement without awareness (somatic amnesia) to movement you are aware of. Somatic movements are based on innate movement patterns evolved when we were young.
Injuries, surgeries, stress, trauma, or habituated movements, are examples of things that create somatic amnesia in our bodies. So the process of mobilizing awareness is to recalibrate our authentic movement patterns. This is foundational for healthy aging.
But for me at this moment is wasabout injury recovery. Servaas put me through several gentle exercises to get me both moving fluidly and thinking about my movements as I did them. I’m used to deep muscle manipulation and focusing on individual muscles, but these movements were about using muscles in combination, and stopping myself from using my muscles in isolation.
I had a session yesterday and went from pain and limited mobility to discomfort and greater range. After a session today I was pain free. I won’t pretend I didn’t feel my back a few times during the day. I won’t tell you that I’m ‘fixed’, but I’m on a path to recovery that would usually take 1-2 weeks and it’s the day after I triggered my back crash.
Now it’s up to me to continue with the exercises. The hard part for me is twofold. First I need to connect physically, even emotionally, to the exercises, recognizing how my body wants to cheat and avoid full range of motion. I need to stay aware of how my body wants to move versus how it should move, and I tend to struggle with this kind of awareness.
Secondly I need to wrap my head around the gentleness of the movements. I feel like I’m not doing enough, or that these subtle movements aren’t worth doing because the effort is more intellectual than strenuous. Yet, I can distinctly see how one side of my body moves so much easier than the other during these stretches.
I am aware that I’m on a journey to move better; to improve not just my flexibility, but my ability to use my body more freely, more childlike, and less like an old man who can trigger a back spasm by taking a large breath. This is a somatic journey, and one I’ve only just started.
So often when a break in the school year comes my body crashes. Often I end up sick with a cold, because I’m too busy to let myself get sick, then the lull comes and my body lets go. Luckily that didn’t happen to end the year. But yesterday I was doing a leg workout and on my second goblet squat my right knee did a little buckle and I twinged a muscle in my mid back.
This morning I took a deep breath in and my back seized. It’s a brutal recognition of my age when breathing can be the trigger to pain. It has been several years since I’ve had a crash this bad, my whole back has seized to protect this one overstressed muscle.
The stress of the last 3 months got to me and now I’ve got to take it really easy. My Norwegian Protocol won’t happen on this Sunday, I’ll have to make it up next week. Today I stretch, hot tub, stretch, and rest. And hopefully my recovery is swift. I didn’t get sick, but my body still crashed.
Although I’ll be working next week, today is the last day of school with staff. It’s always a day that feels melancholy for me. I’m grateful for the approaching summer, but it’s a final farewell to a year that feels more significant than a December 31st year-end celebration.
It was a challenging year for me on many fronts, but mostly health-wise. I shared this recently in my email newsletter to students and their parents:
After a couple months of working in pain every day, I took most of May off with a herniated disc in my neck, which was pinching a nerve going down my left arm. The good news is that I’m almost completely pain free now and my discomfort level is quite low. The challenging thing is that combined with a few other absences this year, I missed more work this year than I probably have in all the other 24 years that I’ve been an educator. Many of you have heard me speak of how challenging absences are at Inquiry Hub, and how good attendance has a direct correlation to overall success… and unfortunately I got to live the consequences of missing a lot of school first hand. I am so thankful for the team that I work with, and I appreciate how much added work they covered in order to keep the experience so positive for our students.
Add covid which, while not herniated disc painful, left me with a week-long low grade headache in November, and a nasty flu in January that knocked me on my butt worse than covid did, and it seemed to me the year was all about being sick or recovery and catch up. I didn’t mention the loss of my father in the message above, but that also happened while dealing with the physical pain.
I’ll be glad to wrap things up next week. All that said, there is a lot of positives to appreciate. Our grads got into the programs they wanted. Planning for next year has me excited about the year ahead. And while I am having some residual issues with the nerves in my arm from the herniated disc, I’ve been pain free for 3+ weeks.
My left arm is weak, and sometimes uncomfortable, but discomfort is so much better than constant pain. My heart goes out to people with chronic pain. I had just over 3 months of it, and working every day for over 2 months in agony before taking time off was brutal… I can’t imagine what life is like for those that live with daily pain and don’t get to feel the relief I now feel.
This gives me perspective, and makes me feel lucky, despite the challenging year I had. I get to look forward to a summer of recovery and revitalization, not of choosing between being in pain or being so medically intoxicated that I don’t want to do, can’t do, anything productive. I get to look forward and see positive things in my future.
But today is melancholy. Today is about saying goodbye. Goodbye to colleagues, and goodbye to the school year. It’s the final countdown to a year I don’t ever want to repeat. I need to focus on expressing my appreciation to my staff for being more supportive of me than I feel I was to them this year… and I hope to make up for that next year!
Yes, I went back home to my parents house after my father’s death, and spent no time alone except sleep and going to the bathroom.
Yes, I’m dealing with a herniated disc and choosing between feeling loopy on drugs or in pain.
Yes, I also fell and it took weeks for my knee to heal because the wound would re-open every time I bent my knee.
Yes, I’ve missed a few days posting here in the last few weeks. I’ve also had the least amount of exercise since I started tracking in January 2019. I’ve also missed more meditations than I have in that same time.
Yes, I’ve missed more work in the past month than I’ve missed in any 10 years of working combined.
Yes, I’m further behind in email than I ever have been… (I’m smart enough not to try to be on email when loopy or in pain).
Yes, I’m really hard on myself when I can’t do the things I think I should be doing.
But I also know how important these routines are for my mental health. It’s 10:45am and I’m finally out of bed and the loopy feeling of the drugs have worn off enough that while I’m not in pain, I feel that I can sit here and write this. I also feel like it’s not safe to walk on a treadmill, like I did for the first time in weeks last night before taking my meds for bed. Sitting in bed this morning I realized that I can lie on the floor and do some stretching. I can definitely meditate. I can listen to my body and go for walks outside, rather than navigating a treadmill.
I can’t rebuild the routines I had before all this just yet, but I can build new routines that keep me thinking positively rather than lying on my back with a pillow below my knees for most of the day. Well, actually that might still be a big part of my coming week, but at least I can (re)build i some routines that make me feel better both physically and mentally.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again… I have tremendous sympathy for anyone who lives with chronic pain. It inspires me to see people who deal with daily or constant pain and still live out their daily lives. For now, I just need to build in some routines that make me feel more human.
I need to un-break my break in routines… not trying to do what I did before… not trying to do too much and setting myself back. Just trying to build a new routine that lets me feel good. On that note, my neck and shoulder have told me that this is enough sitting and typing for a few hours, if not the rest of the day. I’m going to go lay on the floor, listen to some music, stretch and meditate. The best time to start a new habit is right now!
Any regular reader of my daily blog knows I’ve been dealing with neck, back, and shoulder pain. I was scheduled for a CT scan and fortunately a cancellation allowed me to jump the queue and I’ve already had it. Diagnosis: left sided disc herniation at C4/5, most likely impinging the C5 nerve route.
I just have the diagnosis from a nurse and haven’t spoken to my doctor, but I do know there is no quick fix. Its disappointing, quite literally ‘disc’ was the one word I was hoping not to hear.
I’ve made a decision that I won’t post about this issue any more, unless it’s good news. So, no more sharing about the pain I’m in, but maybe that means that I might miss posting on the occasional day. Quite simply, I don’t have a lot to share when my brain is taxed with a constant ache or pain.
I’m giving myself permission not to post daily until my physical condition changes. So that’s why there wasn’t a post yesterday, a day I took off of work after getting very little sleep Sunday night. I struggle to write when I’m in pain, it takes me much longer to write and edit. So for the next couple months at least, my Daily Ink might not be daily. I hope to be myself and posting religiously every day again soon.
Everything is out of whack for me. My whole routine is interrupted. I’ve got a bandaged knee with a lot of new skin that won’t allow me to comfortably go on the treadmill or stationary bike. I’ve got a pinched nerve that seizes up my neck and sends pain down my shoulder, and I’m concerned about doing exercises that tighten up these areas. And the nerve pain has affected the strength in my left arm and so even something like curls for biceps or any exercises for triceps are hindered even when I’m not doing shoulder exercises.
I can stretch, but I really can’t workout. I just weighed myself yesterday and I’ve lost 7 pounds in the last 7 weeks since hurting my shoulder. I have a track record of losing muscle pretty fast when I don’t work out consistently. I know that’s only a pound a week but it’s a 4% loss in weight and it’s the kind of weight I want to keep… not the little extra weight around my waist.
My Physio says I can exercise but my arm aches when I try. My knee is preventing any meaningful cardio, I can’t even walk down stairs other than doing one step at a time, bad foot first, then good foot onto the same step, while holding the rail. I know this is temporary but it’s very frustrating. It’s very painful too. I look forward to not depending on painkillers to get through the day. I look forward to getting my routine back!
My thoughts aren’t so clear these days. Not only does my back and shoulder pain continue, but I had a fall and scraped up my knee pretty badly. I can barely bend my knee without stretching the wound and causing a fair bit of pain. On the bright side my knee pain can distract me from my shoulder pain… that may not sound like a bright side, but it really is.
My frustration now is that cardio has been my only exercise beyond stretching. I’ve enjoyed my stationary bicycle and walks on the treadmill, and my knee is way too sore for either of these right now. So for now I’m stuck being very sedentary. I’m stuck taking strong medication that makes me a bit dizzy at times. I’m stuck in a holding pattern of discomfort, pain, and inactivity. Sometimes the path to getting better is doing less… and that’s what my body is telling me to do right now.
