I am back from the land of the incapacitated. Many of you of Junkie users will know me from the support forums. Over the past few weeks I have been totally absent due to a herniated disc that left me unable to walk or do anything more then lay on my back.

I have always been a very active person. Before JoomlaJunkie I held a blue collar type job where I did a lot of lifting, climbing and physical activity on a daily basis. I put my back in a lot of insane situations and always came out rosy. Fast forward a year and I now do a lot of sitting and working at a computer. I have a rather expensive chair and try to take breaks when I can, but straining my back never seemed to be something I should worry about. Then one day I woke up and could only stand up for about 60 seconds before my entire leg was lit up in pain and my only escape was to lay on my back on the floor.

To be honest I always thought people with back pain were being lame or dramatic. Take some Tylenol and suck it up was my opinion. This changed my outlook on peoples back issues, because it was not just my back that hurt, but everything from my waist down to my toes, and it was easily a 8 out of 10 on the pain scale, with 10 being somebody cutting my leg off with a pair of scissors.  I made two trips to the emergency room with very little help form the hospital aside form telling me to "take it easy". They told me I had a herniated or a ruptured disc.  This meant a piece of my spine was pinching the nerve that controlled my left leg from the lower-back all the way to my toes. There isn't much that can be done and the accepted way to heal it is to do nothing. I was on Percocets, and they did nothing for my pain. they upped me to Oxycontin and the pain was only lowered by about 10%. I actually got a deep tissue injection of Oxycontin the last hospital visit and I still could barely walk to the car to go home. I was stoned off my gourd, by I still had exquisite pain. The pharmacist that filled my scripts actually was concerned with the high value of meds that I was prescribed. My prescriptions actually raised a flag they were so strong. :) Only after 4 and a half weeks of laying down and taking lots of anti-inflammatory drugs did I finally start seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.

It is now week 5 or 6 ish of my experience. I can walk, but I hobble. I can sit, but not for long. My muscles in my left leg are weak from non-use and things like putting my pants on is considerably more complicated now. My leg is still a bit tingly and slightly numb. The doctors say this is all normal behavior for somebody with a pinched nerve and nothing to be alarmed over. In time I will become strong again, and will be back to my old self.

The most important thing to take away from this is the fact that I really didn't do anything wrong. I eat well, try to be careful about my health, and lift with my legs. I didn't experience any trauma or do anything dumb, I was just living my life and it happened. I suppose it came from sitting at my desk too much. Take my experience and store it. If sitting in your chair makes you sore, get up, and do something. Do not try and push through it. It could very easily turn into something debilitating and change your life short-term. I was lucky to have a a few special people in my life who checked up on me and helped me out. I was lucky to be a part of the JoomlaJunkie team. I was just generally lucky. I don't wish the experience I had on anybody, and hope this post will remind everybody that we are all human and scary crap can happen to anybody...at anytime...for no reason.