Living in Pain

It's been a few weeks since my last post, and it has been an interesting time. I haven't been able to let myself write because as much as I want to be open and honest here I've been hesitant to put forth what I felt would only be a tedious string of self-serving whining and wallowing. I decided the better choice was just to keep it all in, spend a lot of time in bed, stew and stress over it, and then unleash all the pent up frustration on those least deserving of my crazy when they least expected it. Awesome plan, right? Totally healthy. Coaches love it when you burst into tears in the middle of a workout don't they?

In the four months since I injured my back I haven't spent much time being happy or enjoying life. I haven't been fun to be around. I haven't been able to find joy in many things. Truthfully, I was too focused on being hurt and on the things that I couldn't do. Pain is an attention whore. I have always said that I have a high tolerance for pain - that after my accident it takes a lot of pain to really "put me out of commission" as it were, but it isn't really true. Yes I can live in pain and still function for the most part. I can get out of bed and groom myself and go to work and cook and clean and exist, but when I'm in pain, that's basically all I am doing. Existing. And that existence is so devoid of joy and fulfillment, you almost wonder what the point is.

Since the accident, almost 10 years ago now, there really hasn't been a day in my memory that I haven't been in some sort of pain, even though it's not exclusively accident related. It hasn't always been to the point where I'm sulking about in a joyless stupor, but there's consitent discomfort somewhere on my body, pretty much every day. I've gotten to the point where I take it as a given, that's it's just the hand I've been dealt, it's something I have to live with and work through. I should know the difference between soreness, general discomfort, and injury pain - but truthfully it gets hard to decipher sometimes. It become a daily game of Pain Assessment 20 Questions: "What hurts today? Do you know why? Did you do something to hurt that part of your body? Is there bad weather in the forecast? Was it hurting yesterday? Does it hurt more than the other things that are hurting you right now? Has it ever hurt here before? Scale of 1-10...can you live with it? Do you have a choice?"

I try to only worry about pains that I can't trace to something specific I've done, that are in new or odd places, that last longer than a few days, etc. People will tell you to listen to your body and that the pain is telling you something is wrong. I was never trying to be one of those "Go hard or go to hell, pain is for wimps, push till you die, puke, or pass out" people, but I also didn't want to be the girl anymore that quit, or gave up, or used pain as an excuse to not try. I felt that if I didn't go to workout on days that I was in pain, I would never go. I lumped all the pain together and envisioned it as a wall I just had to push through, that eventually if I just kept pushing I would get stronger and the pains would go away and one day I wouldn't be in pain anymore. And this kind of worked, initially.

In my first few months of CrossFit the ability to push through that wall of initial "pains" and fears and keep trying new things allowed me to make gains in the gym and get stronger. It allowed me to lose weight and find physical and inner strength I forgot I had. It helped me reclaim the abilities I thought my accident had taken from me. And I did feel better. Doing CrossFit and focusing on a diet free of inflammatory food helped to get rid of my constant headaches, stomach aches, joint pain, and other general discomfort pains that I didn't really pay attention to because they were all just a part of the overall state of suck that I'd been living in for at least the last 8 years. Through that time I always thought, "Wouldn't it be great to wake up one day and have absolutely no pain and think 'Damn I feel fantastic today!'... I wonder what it would be like to be one of the people that can do that?" On several days in those few months, except for some residual muscle soreness from the previous day's workout, I actually had days where I came pretty close to feeling great when I woke up. I felt rested, and strong, and ready to take on the day.

Then somewhere along the way I kind of forgot what it meant to be smart about pain management. I started pushing myself too much and ignoring the real signs that something was wrong. I was stubborn about not "giving up" and not wanting to rest and not wanting to miss days in the gym. I didn't want to scale and I didn't want to stop when it hurt really bad and all of these things were really stupid of me. These were the things that caused me to hurt my back and to keep it from getting better over the last few months. For every little gain I may have made toward letting my back heal I did twice as much damage by pushing too hard. I took a reduction in pain as my green light to ramp up my effort in the gym. Even if I was in excruciating pain to the point where I was laying on the floor in tears the day before, if I felt good in the moment the next day that was my okay (in my head) to go for it with everything I had. And I'd get through, but a few hours later I was in pain again.

The reasoning of someone who is moderately insane.
 

It took yet another coach intervention to get me to the point where I finally let all of this sink in and was able to take stock of where my mind was and how destructive I was being. I finally admitted that I hadn't been honest with myself or my doctor or my coach about how much pain I was still in on a consistent basis and I agreed that I needed to seek out what the underlying problem was that was causing my pain. Even on my best days, there was still that nagging lower back pain. Now that I have the answer (sacral torsion) and have a plan on how to fix it (putting the sacrum back where it's supposed to be and doing PT to help keep it there and in the meantime being smart about what I'm doing in the gym to REALLY let it heal this time) I feel much better about things. I have to limit the days that I'm in the gym and focus more time on what I'm doing to further my cause outside of the gym.

This next phase is going to be less about the work I'm doing in the gym and more about diet and rest and mental strength and finding my happy again. What I've done so far has been getting answers, making a plan for recovery, and being okay with limited gym time. As much as I've missed being in the gym 5 days a week for the last 2 weeks, I have enjoyed feeling rested. I've spent a lot of time looking for positivity. I've clicked on almost every link anyone's shared on Facebook that claims to "restore your faith in humanity" or "make your day." I've purposefully sought out things that will make me laugh and smile. When I was looking for all my Christmas music in the files I transferred from my old laptop I found an entire folder of music that dated back to the days when I downloaded everything from Napster transferred all the music from my CDs to my computer, and I've had a great time listening to Christmas music and rediscovering a lot of the music that I listened to in the early 2000s. I've been singing a lot and playing my piano. I've been remembering that I'm much more than a weightlifter or CrossFit athlete. CrossFit is still really important to me and is still a huge part of my life, but instead of feeling down about not getting to go to the gym as much or getting to do as much while I'm there, I'm trying to fill the time with other things that I enjoy that I haven't made a part of my life as much in the last year or so.

It makes me feel like a broken record to say this, but my next step is to really get my nutrition dialed back in and my recovery on point. I will have much more time to plan and prep and sleep and rest and get myself back into a routine that works for me now, not me a year ago. I realize that part of the reason I was pushing myself so hard in the gym, despite the injury and excruciating pain, is because I was afraid of how much weight I've gained in the last six months and of finding myself back at 350 pounds. I knew everything else was so out of control I didn't feel like I could afford to not be in the gym every possible day that I could. I was holding on to the one piece I thought I could control. Now I can focus on all the other pieces I wasn't before and hopefully that will make the few days that I am in the gym much more productive. This is definitely a new approach for me, but it feels like a good one so far and I'm excited to see if I can make it work.