Earlier this month, I saw a physiatrist about my back/leg injury. I can’t say that I was too impressed with him since I found him dismissive and rushed. And he told me to exercise – somehow the “I noticed this sharp pain in my leg when I was RUNNING” and “I try to workout everyday” didn’t register with him. He did order an MRI of my lumbar spine, which revealed that three of my discs are mildly herniated. My L5 disc (the one at the bottom of my spine and the one most people injure) is off to the left side, which is pinching my sciatic nerve (hence the sharp pain in my left leg when I run and the constant tingling in my left leg). I’m not sure if the other two discs are of much concern (perhaps I would know had he spent longer than 5 minutes reviewing my MRI with me) and I’m not sure that they’re causing any of the off and on throbbing pain in my lower back (apparently you could have bulging discs in your back and not even have any symptoms). He prescribed physical therapy for a couple of months and did manage to refer me to an awesome physical therapy place.

The physical therapy is pretty time consuming, which has been stressful. The PT appointments range from 1.5 to 2.5 hours, twice a week (and the only reason they’ve been 1.5 hours is because I’ve had to rush them because I needed to get back to work!). I also have to do some stretching and strengthening exercises at home and those tend to take me about one to two hours to do. The PT place is really nice, down the street from my office, and seems to have a very sports medicine approach (which I especially appreciate). They’re a million times better than the first PT I had tried way back in June. They did a very thorough evaluation of my condition during the first visit and seem to always work with how I’m feeling that day. There have been a few times during the past couple of weeks where things we did in PT flared up my back or leg and when that’s happened, we’ve adjusted my exercises. When that happened with the last PT, she seemed to always blame me instead of actually taking responsibility for her treatment (one time she was convinced that I had been crossing my legs at work hence causing more tingling in my leg, which is funny because I NEVER cross my legs). Given the time commitment, I’m really hoping that the PT will work but it is hard to say since I’ve yet to see any improvement.

Aside from the amount of time I’m spending on physical therapy, I’ve also been pretty frustrated with the limitations that have been put on my exercise. I can’t run. I can’t ride a bike. I can’t do spinning or kick boxing. I can’t go on a strenuous hike (I can go hiking as long as the trail is pretty flat, which sort of defeats the purpose of hiking). I can do the elliptical, stairmaster (although I can’t seem to do it for longer than 15 minutes since the sharp pain in my leg starts after about 20 minutes), stationary bike, swim, and walk (I’m not so sure about the walking since it does seem to cause the same type of pain as running). I haven’t been doing any resistance training since I don’t really have the time to do it anymore and it also seems to flare up the pain in my back.

As I’ve mentioned before, this injury has been really hard on me. I can’t do the activities that I really enjoy and I can’t seem to lose any more weight without those strenuous activities. I came to the conclusion last week that I may just have to focus on maintaining the 65 pounds I’ve lost so far and healing my back/leg. Even though I know maintaining my weight loss during an injury is a pretty big deal, it is still pretty hard for me to accept that that may be as much as I can do right now.

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