I think that may be Spring Creek, actually. This is a video if you’re listening to the podcast. I’m doing a video because I’m on a new trail today. I’m not sure what it’s called, but for now, I’m going to call it Spring Creek Trail because it does go along Spring Creek. The only problem with that is that Spring Creek winds through the whole town, so this may not be the only trail beside the creek.

So I’m walking. I don’t know how far I will get, but I hope I get to this side of this half of the trail, at least this part. I say trail, but it’s all concrete. There are lines down the middle. It’s got street lamps all along the way. It might be interesting to film it at night, but I’ve seen it at night. I’m walking it for the very first time. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while. A massive construction project is happening right across the street from where we are. They waited I guess until construction got to a point where they weren’t going to mess it up. And it’s paved on the other side. This side is concrete, and the other is paved with blacktop and lines. So I’m assuming that has been finished and goes all the way through to my mother’s apartment complex. So we’re going to see about that in a future episode, but this time, we’re just hoping to get down this trail and back to my house, which is usually within walking distance.

Welcome to Running a Fever. My name is Michael Davis. This is a podcast about fitness, diet, and medicine. My goal is to live a long, healthy, happy, active life right up to the very end. I want to do it by loving my life enough to make it last as long as possible.

So what’s the deal with my back? Let me recap what I’ve said in a previous episode. You know that I’ve been complaining about problems when I’m walking. After walking for a while, my back would start hurting. I thought that was just me being out of shape, being too heavy, and that it was all muscular. Then, some weeks later, I was cutting my grass, and I started having some severe pain just from doing that. And then, two weeks later, it was so unbearable that I was walking tripled. You could see that even after I’d been standing for just a few minutes. I would have to sit down for a while before continuing. I remember being at church and having to sit down on the way out to my car. So that’s how bad it was. And it was excruciating pain. On a scale of 10, it was probably 10, maybe 9. I can remember one other time when I had just terrible pain, and that was my 10. It’s been so long that I couldn’t compare the two. It’s either a nine or a 10, definitely at the top end of the pain scale.

I’ve got my fitness watch, which doesn’t do much for fitness. It does count steps and check my heart rate. Now here you can see a split, one branch goes up to this side of the street, the other goes through the tunnel under the street and comes up on the other side. So you can go to the other side of the street without crossing traffic in which someone would probably run you over. So it’s cool that we have a tunnel. It’s going to be literally cool. It’s fairly hot today. I hope the echo isn’t too bad.

I’m judging distance by time. I know that I have about a 20-minute mile walking at this point in my life. And right now, I’ve been walking for about 15 minutes, so probably almost a mile. I expected this would take longer. But the thing is I haven’t been on the trail the whole time because the trail doesn’t start at my house, it starts down the street from my house, like I said, next to this construction project. Since I’ve already walked at least three-quarters of a mile, I will go ahead and turn around. But you can see where it ends or where it stops at the street, and you can take the sidewalk on this side and walk down the highway to your heart’s content. There may be a trail over there someday because the creek goes around here…There is some kind of right-of-way because there are power lines. So it could go on, but it doesn’t; it stops here. So I’ve been walking since my house, not since I started the trail and this podcast. Now, I’m going the other way so you can see what this terrain looks like from the other direction.

So, continuing the story of my back. When it had gotten that excruciating, I went to the doctor. I hoped it would get better, but it didn’t. I went to the doctor and fortunately was able to get an x-ray two hours before I saw the doctor, and they had it developed and ready. And not just developed of course because they don’t do that anymore, it’s digital. But it had been analyzed by a radiologist. So that was amazing. It’s a testament to the fact that the VA isn’t as bad as it’s made out to be sometimes. Because that’s where I was getting all this. So not actually a doctor, a clinical nurse said that I needed an MRI. And the VA’s was backed up so she got me in at another place in the “community” as we say, outside the VA. I was able to do that within a week or so.

Two days before the MRI, my pain went away. And as I tell people, I really think it’s a God thing. Because it stopped rather suddenly. I still have problems with my back, so it’s not like there was a miraculous healing that took place because I still haven’t been healed. But I don’t have the pain anymore, which is part of a healing I suppose. And I don’t have to tell you probably that I had been praying when I was going through that excruciating pain for some help. But I didn’t pray for it to all go away; I just wanted to be able to do what I needed to do.

So the MRI showed–it’s a really tight fit for someone my size, by the way. The MRI showed that I had two problems. When I went to the neurosurgical PA, I was also in the “community” because there was no neurosurgeon at the VA facility that was closest to me. He showed me the MRI, the parts of it that are important—a cross-section of the spine. There is a narrowing of the spinal column. They probably call it something else, but it’s that tube that goes through your spine that contains liquid and your spinal cord. And there’s a narrowing of that that may cause some pain. There’s another problem as well, in that one of my discs (a sort of shock absorber between your vertebrae) had completely disappeared between my L4 and L5, and the L4 has slid out from where it’s supposed to be. So, there’s another possible source of pain.

Prognosis? It will not get any better with today’s technology except for surgery. And since I have no pain, I’m not going to have surgery. There’s also physical therapy, which I suppose can help and is a less invasive treatment. The surgeon’s instruction was to stay active, and that’s what I’m doing today and staying active. So, if you’re having pain or any other kind of problem, go see your medical provider because it may be something serious, and there may be a way to treat it.

Nobody is on this trail today, and I didn’t see any signs saying what the trail was or any distance markers of any kind. So I’ve been walking for a little over 20 minutes now, so a little more than a mile, theoretically. I’m feeling no back pain, which is amazing. Nothing has changed except the passage of time. I haven’t been very active. I’ve been concerned about the pain. I did take a muscle relaxer left over from when I had the pain, and I put on a Lidocaine patch as a preemptive measure just in case the pain came back. But no pain at this point, and I’m on the way back to my house.

So from the Spring Creek Trail, I can tell you that I hope you enjoyed this episode and the video of the new trail. And if you’ve got the fever keep it, and if you don’t, catch the fever. And I will talk to you next time on Running: A FEVER.