I Ran an Entire Mile
It’s a bigger deal than it sounds.
On November 17, 2020 I ran an entire mile. That’s not much to most people but it was a significant milestone in a 337 day long rehabilitation process. It was the first entire mile I had run since December 13, 2019. On that day I ran three miles and felt fine. But the next day, pain in one foot caused a limp that then caused my back to hurt. The next morning, I stumbled into the bathroom, tried to sit down and screamed loud enough for my wife to hear me on the other end of the house.
The pain in my lower back was unlike anything I had ever encountered. It froze any movement and radiated down through my right buttock and on to the end of the toes on my right foot. An hour later my wife had four dining chairs spaced out along the path from our front door to my truck. She held me up as I shuffled to the first chair and collapsed in pain. A few minutes later she held me up and I shuffled to the second chair and collapsed. We repeated this to the third and fourth chairs until I finally made into my truck, and off to the local emergency room and the miracle of morphine.
We lived in Florida at that time and two trips to the Mayo Clinic ER in Jacksonville would ensue. There would be X-rays, ultrasound, an MRI and two spinal injections for pain. There was a month spent using a walker to get around. For most of January, I could not…
