John’s Ramblings

Part 1200 in a series on my ongoing quest to figure out what the hell is going on with my neck/shoulder/arm.  Yes, the weakness continues…

At the recommendation of my Family Physician, I had an MRI done on my neck Wednesday night.  Cool machine, if you aren’t claustrophobic.  I wasn’t, until I got into this machine.  A coffin has more space that this thing.  I was actually cool until about 20 minutes into this 25 minute ordeal, then I got a very strong urge to getthehelloutofhere.  I had to calm my breathing, and think “happy thoughts” (mine was the bicycle descent from Sunrise/Mt. Rainier).

The results today:

It looks like you have quite a bit of degeneration of the discs between your vertebrae. Please make a telephone or in person appointment to discuss

FuckityFuckFuckFuckFuckFuckFuck.

I knew something was wrong, and I had pretty much assimilated that I may have had a slight bulging disc in the neck, but I wasn’t quite prepared for “degeneration”.  I’m hoping it sounds worse that it is, but when I look at it I just feel old.  Not good.

I’m determined to work around this thing, and still accomplish my goals.  In order to do that, I need to

• Rehab the current injury/symptoms (neck/shoulder pain & lack of grip in left hand)
• Improve my posture and movement patterns so as to avoid further injury
• Strengthen the neck and improve it’s flexibility
• Train consistently on the strength and endurance I will need to pass the RKC certification in April.

I am in week 1 of a 9 week “transformation contest” at Luka’s gym.  Three mornings a week, I’m rolling in to Renton at 6 a.m. for 40 minutes of hell.  That’s in addition to the 1 night a week of strength training I’m still doing.  I love the strength stuff, lifting heavy shit gives me great joy.  40 minutes of consistently hard bodyweight exercise amongst 20 heaving bodies is probably more difficult for me.  Bonus points that some of the bodies are pretty nice, even at 6 a.m.

Stay tuned to the ongoing saga of John’s pain-in-the-neck.  I’ll try to be more consistent in updating y’all.  For the sake of accountability, here’s the link to my FitDay stats, so you can see how the transformation is progressing:

John’s FitDay

Tags: "degeneration of cervical discs", exercise, goals, hocevar performance, weight loss

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