Back Surgery: What They Didn't Tell Me

It's been awhile since I have blogged about my situation with my goals in both figure competitions and martial-arts.

I've taken the summer off from martial-arts. It's been hard and a bit depressing. I really want to kick a pad, a person...just about anything will do. I miss kicking, I miss doing forms, and I miss the workout, but I told myself I would take time off so that my back can heal. I thought that if I gave my back time that I would be able to come back to martial-arts stronger than before.

Unfortunately that is not the case. Whether or not I took time off from martial-arts, my back was going to get worse. What they didn't tell me before I had my back surgery last year was that there is a risk for developing scar tissue. This scar tissue has caused me to lose flexibility and mobility. I am in a lot of pain, AGAIN.

I spent all of July doing laser treatments and getting injections to help my joints, but this did not work. I went to a pain specialist last week since none of the stuff my surgeon had been doing worked. The specialist told me that since I did initially get better after the surgery before becoming worse, the problem is more than likely scar tissue.

Tomorrow I go in for even more injections. If the medicine relieves some of the pain, then we know that the issue is in the joints. If nothing happens with the injections, then I have to go get another MRI (yay for the wallet -- NOT) to determine if it is really scar tissue.

I'm not sure what they will do if it is scar tissue, but the specialist made me believe that it is tough to remedy.

That is where I am with my training. No heavy lifting, no high impact exercise, no bending or standing for long periods of time, and multiple doctors visits a week has meant that I cannot train for neither martial-arts or figure competitions.