The Never Healing Body

There are a few different idioms out there involving one's body. Some more relatable to me are "I've got a lot of miles under my belt" and "some people's bodies are a temple, mine's an amusement park."

Well, over the last four and a half decades my amusement park of a body has earned a great number of miles on it. Between injuries and illness, my body has spent more time down than up it seems, especially recently. Now, I'm not dying or anything, at least not that I know of, but the recent string of issues had me reflecting on things.

I know others out there have it worse. I'm not throwing myself a pity party or trying to say that I've had it bad. I've had a fun, full, and good life. But it's been a life full of detours.

As a child, I was plagued by ear infections. According to my mother, when I was about 2 I had an ear infection for almost a year straight. That infection, and others like it, led to me having multiple surgeries to have tubes put in my ears. The side effect of all this was that it also caused some scarring in my ears that led to hearing loss. Luckily, most of this was when I was too young to really understand any of it or know what was going on. In fact, most of what I know from that period comes from stories my mother told me about my childhood and growing up knowing that I had tubes in my ears that prevented me from doing certain aquatic activities for a while.

Minor surgeries aside, my childhood was largely filled with sports. From the age of 5 until I was about 13 I played baseball. On the field, I played every position but pitcher. My all-time favorite position, and the one I spent multiple seasons playing, was catcher. During those years about the only issues I really suffered was a few rolled, sprained, or twisted ankles. They were the typical injuries children of those ages suffered in that sport. Nothing serious. Nothing major.

The only real ailment was allergies. They ended up being pretty rough. At one point, I was getting 3 shots a week. That was the only way that I could breathe and not be congested and coughing all day while I was at school. That lasted until my mid teens basically.

Once I hit about the age of 8, I added youth league basketball. I was never particularly good at the sport but I did get to spend a few years running up and down the court. As luck would have it, I don't recall ever having any injuries or major illnesses during those years.

And when I wasn't playing sports when I was young, I was constantly out riding my bike down the dirt roads that ringed our house out in the country. I think I put more miles on my bike in my youth than any one car that I've owned as an adult. Sure, like anyone else, I took a few tumbles on my bike. Scraped knees. Scraped hands. Scraped elbows. All the usual, but nothing major. The only "big" injury I had involving my bike was when I fell off and brother couldn't swerve fast enough. His peddle hit me in my forehead. It left a large circular wound that bled profusely at the time and I had a nice ring scar for a while but other than the superficial the wound wasn't that bad.

As I hit junior high, I added football and track to my list of activities. Again, for those 2 years everything was fine. I started lifting weights. I was running pretty much year round between the sports. I was still riding my bike. No major injuries. No major illnesses. No hospital visits. My tween years were going strong.

And then I started high school.

As I started the final few years of my public education, my outdoor activities began to wane. My bike became less prominent, especially as I neared closer and closer to legally driving. I stopped playing baseball. My skills weren't up to snuff to compete at that level. Likewise for basketball. Instead, I focused on football, or at least I did for the first 3 years of high school. I spent 1 year doing competitive weightlifting and 2 years doing track, primarily hurdles.

During my 1 year of weightlifting, my freshman year, I tried a lift I shouldn't have and popped something in my back. Since that day, I've been plagued with back pains that can cripple me for days at a time. Things as simple as putting on shoes, sitting up in bed, getting out of the car, and other pretty basic activities can render me completely immobile.

The reason I only played sports for 3 years of high school is because it was during those three years that the wheels started to come off the train. During my sophomore year I found out that I had some severe asthma. While out playing in our pasture, I collapsed and spent the next 2 days struggling to breathe before going to the doctors who nearly hospitalized because my O2 levels were so low. Some medical steroids and a number of inhalers later, the doctors released me to play sports again. And here I am 30 years later and I still have multiple inhalers.

But the real damage came in my junior year. I had managed, with the help of modern medicines, to keep my asthma at bay well enough to continue to play football at a high level considering where I attended school. But in that 1 year of football I suffered 2 concussions, 1 broken elbow, 1 broken wrist, 1 mildly hyper extended knee, and 1 high ankle sprain. And somehow, despite all of these injuries, I still managed to play 7.5 games in a 13 game season. I still managed to win a few local and regional awards for my gameplay.

But at the end of the season, I knew my athletic career was done. Between the chronic back pains, stiff elbow, locking knee, and troubled breathing, sports were not to be part of my future.

Or so I thought.

I spent the next several years dealing with the long-lasting effects of my youthful decisions. Doctors had no clue about why my back hurt the way it did. I had X-rays done. I had MRIs done. And nothing ever showed up to explain the problems. I firmly feel I have something that causes a nerve to get pinched. The pain is almost always preempted with a popping sensation followed by severe pain. It doesn't feel like a broken bone but it feels like a nerve. Doctors dismiss my opinions and dismiss my history and tell me a different cause every time I seek help. I had one, just recently, compare the scans of my spine to that of someone half my age. He was surprised that my spine looked as good as it did considering my history. When I countered with, "well, yeah, that's why I don't think its a spine issue but a nerve issue," he  seemed confused. He didn't pursue my concerns but instead just told me to go home and take Tylenol when it hurt.

But through much of my 20s and early 30s that was the extent of things. No new major injuries. No major illnesses. Nothing but a little heartbreak and youthful stupidity that caused me mental and emotional pain. I rode 4-wheelers. I rode horses. I drove fast. I had a couple of accidents on em all but always walked away largely unscathed. I hit a large puddle of water going nearly 40 mph on my 4-wheeler and was thrown over the handle bars. I got up with my bell rung a bit but my 4-wheeler took the brunt of the damage. I was involved in a car accident when a truck spun out in front of me on a wet road and I couldn't stop in time. My car was totaled but me and the kids walked away without a scratch.

As my kids got older and started showing interest in sports, I wanted to be there to help. I love my parents, don't get me wrong, but they were never involved with my sports. They would come to my games and watch me play but they never coached any sports. They never came and sat through a practice. I would either ride my bike to the baseball field or get dropped off but that was the extent of their participation. After having some shitty coaches in high school, and some stellar ones, I wanted to be an example of a good coach for my kids.

The older boys tried their hands at baseball but didn't really take to it. They didn't have interest in football. They did play some youth basketball for a couple of years but the majority of their time was spent playing soccer. Back then, I didn't know the first thing about soccer other than their mom played a little in high school. For the first few seasons, nothing big happened.

That is until my 3rd born was about 15. I didn't coach their teams but I assisted. I would help setup drills, run drills, supervise the kids, just whatever the coach needed to help practice go smooth. I was at almost every practice. I wasn't a helicopter parent but a parent who didn't expect the coach to be my babysitter. Well, on that particular day, I stepped in some mud as I kicked the ball. My foot didn't rotate with the pass and I ended up tearing a ligament in my knee and shredding every muscle in my ankle. It took me nearly 2 years to recover. I spent 8 months not able to even drive a car. It has permanently altered the gait of my walk and run.

But that didn't stop me from doing things with my kids. Once I was able, I continued to help coach soccer for 3 of my kids and baseball for my youngest. My enthusiasm in soccer practices had taken something of a decline but I was fully invested in baseball. At one point, my youngest son played for 3 different teams at the same time and I helped coach all 3.

It was my youngest son's last year to play baseball when I had to give up sports forever. During the state playoffs I managed to literally destroy my shoulder. Most people might think a rotator cuff injury, which is bad on its own, but I took it a different level apparently. My rotator cuff was fine. It was the only part of my shoulder that didn't get messed up. Somehow I managed to tear the muscle on the shoulder blade, tear cartilage in the top part, tear the ligament my shoulder rotates on in 3 places, and pulled part of my bicep off the bone. It took a 4 hour surgery to fix everything followed by 6 weeks of recovery and then 4 months of physical therapy.

These days I feel like my body is 80% arthritis.

For those 2 decades while I raised my kids, illnesses were kept to the occasional cold, seasonal allergies, and that was about it. I mostly dealt with my back issues more than anything else. I experienced chest pains and seizures as a teenager but it was eventually diagnosed as anxiety induced and I've learned how to control it but there were a few years in my late teens and early twenties where that was a freaky situation.

My health issues, aside from my many physical injuries, didn't really start until 2021. I mean, my allergies had started getting worse before then but it was early January 2021 when I first caught COVID. I was down for nearly 2 weeks but managed to stay out of the hospital. But I never really fully recovered. I remained weak and short of breath even after a year. Since then, I've had recurring issues. I stay sick. I can't stay healthy. My immune system is trashed. Its so odd.

These days I wake up and wonder if it will be a good day or a bad day. Will I cough until my throat is raw and I can't talk or will I have tons of energy and be inspired to do all the things that stacked up during my bad days? Flu. Pneumonia. Upper respiratory infection. These have just been on repeat for me since that first COVID experience.

I'd be lying if I said it didn't impact my writing. There are days I just don't feel good enough to sit at my computer and write. Other days, my head hurts so bad I can't think of the words that I want to write.

I tell my wife that I have the body of an 80 year old with the personality of a 7 year old. She laughs but she never disagrees.