I’m afraid of roaches. Terrified, actually. Occasionally I see tiny ones in my condo and that, more than the shoddy construction work or my criminally-active neighbors, is what I dislike most about my home. My nightmares feature roaches at least every other week.
I’m afraid of gaining weight. When I eat a cupcake, I hate myself for it and vow to work out extra hard the next day as penance. I do, but then I also eat another cupcake, and that is why I am great at training.
I’m afraid of small spaces. The idea of being buried alive is crippling. When I went to get my MRI yesterday, the technician asked if I was claustrophobic. The answer is yes, but I was too high, cranky, and impatient to get it done, so I lied. When she slid me all the way into the narrow tube, I panicked silently under my stifling shroud of blankets and tried very hard to focus on the single plastic screw directly in front of my nose for the whole 30-minute scan.
Most of all, though, I am afraid of losing this cycling dream. Cycling has given my life direction, purpose, and joy. There are whole chapters since my teenage years where I struggled with depression and darkness, but cycling has provided an outlet to burn off the bad feelings. It is a lifeline that tethers me to sanity and gives me a reason to keep marching through failure, divorce, job changes, life changes, everything and anything. When this back injury happened the last time, I kept hysterically asking during the ambulance ride, “Is this a career killer?!? Is this a career killer?!?” When all of the testing showed no clear explanation for the problem, I decided the answer was going to be no. An inexplicable back injury was nothing more than a temporary setback. I quit the gym for the season but got back on the trainer immediately and decided I was in charge.
It worked. When I hit the ground at Sleepy Hole, that marked the end of the residual back pain from December’s injury. It was replaced by a new host of injuries, but I was sufficiently distracted as to forget the old one. The weightlifting last winter required that I slow down and reminded me that I had back problems, but I was able to tread carefully and make it through safely to the racing season. Come this winter, I knew I had limitations, but was even more respectful of them. Regular visits to the chiropractor and massage therapist, continual icing and heat on my back, and a sloth-like progression with the weights.
Clearly it was not enough. Now I am afraid again. I believe the mental aspect of training and racing is huge, but I am not high enough to believe I can will away a serious physical weakness.
Hold on; let me ingest three more Dilaudid and try again.
My mother arranged for a specialist to visit me in the hospital last night and finally, for the first time in the two years since this back injury ordeal began, I think we might have an answer. The regular doctor didn’t see anything noteworthy on my MRI scans, but the specialist noticed that I have two degenerative discs. Those, in conjunction with my congenital bilateral pars defect, combine to create weakness in 60% of my lumbar spine. This makes my back muscles work overtime trying to protect and stabilize my vulnerable spine, and sometimes it gets to be too much and I end up in the hospital.
This answer requires further exploration. I’m going to work with the specialist’s partner, a spinal surgeon, and we will do interventional radiology along my spine. By injecting facetal blocks around the facetal joints of my spine using X-ray control, we will try to determine the specific trouble spots. I can do an injection in one location every few weeks and once we have tested the possibilities (the 3/4 and 4/5 facetals and the pars defect, for any spine dorks out there), we will discuss my options. These will likely include either doing nothing except being careful and handling my spine more carefully or doing a single or two-level fusion on my spine. This could work, or it could lead to further degeneration around the fused area.
No option is great. On one hand, I am relieved to have a better understanding of why I constantly deal with back pain. Sometimes the not knowing is worse than anything else. On the other hand, I am afraid. This current bout of injury will pass with time, but my back is a time bomb and if I am not careful, then I will be back savoring the all-you-can-eat menu at Fair Oaks Hospital.
The chicken tenders were excellent, but I would rather not have them again soon.
I know the obvious things to avoid. Deadlifts. Squats. Lifting large animals. But I thought I was playing within the bounds on Monday and then came the drugs and the chicken fingers.
So I will be more careful. No gym. No plyometrics. I may take up swimming for cross-training, although that involves public pools, and those involve a lot of used band-aids, hairballs, and pee. But I will not stop cycling. I have a good life outside of riding, but I have a wonderful life with it. It may be a risk, but it is one that I am willing to take in exchange for having a life I love living. In less than two weeks, I begin my first professional contract and I will not miss that opportunity.
I came home from the hospital this afternoon and got on the trainer (lest you be dismayed, this was pseudo-approved by both the specialist and the physical therapist as a way to loosen my overly-tight muscles). Sitting in a chair is painful, lying on a couch is painful, standing in my kitchen is painful. But getting on that bike again, awakening my legs and shaking off the haze of the past forty-eight hours, that hurt damn good.