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It is 9:45 pm on a freezing January night. My high school sweetheart meets me at the mall store where I work. At age 18, in my first semester of college, I’m proud of my job as Assistant Manager.
I lower the metal gate to the store, and we walk out to my metallic mint green Volkswagen Rabbit. Just before Christmas I made the last payment on the car plus added four new tires. For Christmas, my boyfriend got me a new fancy stereo while another friend gave me high-tech speakers, turning my little Rabbit into a music machine!
My boyfriend asks if I’d like to go hang out with a friend of ours at his work, so we decide I will follow his Mustang in my sweet little car. I swear it had real rabbits in the engine that would run along the belt to make it go! He’s a safe driver, and I know he won’t lose me on the dark country back roads.
We travel along the familiar roads. I’m singing along to the Cowboy Junkies and Sweet Jane. (It’s a good song to have playing in your head for the rest of the day đŸ˜‰ )
The next thing I know I’m waking up from a medically-induced coma almost a month later.
No one knows what caused the accident. I can’t remember. Could have been a blown tire (doesn’t make sense cause those were brand new), maybe a dog crossed the road, and I overcorrected, perhaps my blood sugar tanked from hypoglycemia – who knows. All I know is I left work one January night, and I still don’t remember the accident 25 years later.
The injuries are significant. I have compression fractures in six vertebrae between my shoulder blades. There is one vertebra broke in my neck. All of the bones in my face shattered. My left wrist and hand – crushed. The retina in my right eye is detached. There are a million tiny glass cuts all over from the windshield. Oh, and I have a traumatic brain injury.
What does that have to do with back and neck pain?
Y’all, I know pain. I’ve been in pain since that fateful January night twenty-five years ago. Between chronic migraines, back pain that radiates down the entire right side and neck pain if I turn a certain way – I’ve felt it. I know it. And goodness knows, pain knows me well.
Pain-Free Living (yeah, right!)
During a recent breaking point, I googled books to help with chronic pain. (That’s what you do if you’re a reader, right?) I came across a book with impressive reviews and clicked the order button. When I read through the first few chapters of Pain-Free: A Revolutionary Method for Stopping Chronic Pain by Pete Egoscue {Affiliate Link}, it was easy to understand and implement immediately. I thought I would try the exercises and if nothing changed, no harm, no foul.
I focused on the exercises for headaches and pain through the upper back/shoulder area initially. And I kid you not, after the very first day of doing the exercises a migraine I had had for a week went from a 10+ to a 4 in pain strength. After doing the exercises a couple of days in a row, the back pain that had me crying and sick (and I don’t cry), was more bearable than it had been in years.
Now, most mornings I wake up, walk the puppy and then spend about 30 -45 minutes doing specific stretches outlined in Pain-Free. I kind of pick and choose the series depending on what hurts the most – my back or my head. Once I’ve completed the exercises I get on with my day. But, I do take the time to get up and stretch, walk around (and walk Basco), every hour. Sitting at a computer is rough on our bodies. Heck, sitting with a book is rough on our bodies. I know some of the positions I get in when I’m reading would make a yogi cringe!
This book is an amazing resource for anyone with chronic pain! Click To TweetThis book and these exercises are not an easy fix. It takes the time to do the exercises. It requires a couple of yoga blocks, a chair, a door, and a few other household props to do some of the exercises. But you know what? I haven’t succumbed to the knife for my neck or my back, and I do not take opioids. The exercises in this book leave me alert, mostly pain-free and without adding to the endless medical bills I already have.
If you know someone with chronic pain or if you are someone with chronic pain, I challenge you to try the exercises in this book for 3-4 days and see if it relieves your pain. What do you have to lose?
Side note
Just because I have not gone under the knife for back or neck surgery does not mean I discount the surgeries others have undergone. I’ve had so many surgeries to date that I’ve honestly lost count – between surgeries from the accident, multiple surgeries for endometriosis, three hysterectomies (another crazy story), and a bleeding ulcer that will not go away – goodness knows I’ve had my share of surgeries. I’ve been kind of stubborn about my back and neck – plus the area that requires surgery is too high in my back for it to not be fairly risky.
Learn more about my health journey.
