Hi, I'm Steve, this'll be a long one

[FoxtrotOff]

Hi there.

My name is Stephen, I am 30 years old, live in the north of England, I work in the public sector as a senior IT tech at a high school, I an 6'4" and I weigh 20st.

I was born in 1984 and was brought up by an alcoholic and abusive father with a mother who was very passive towards his actions, I struggle with bipolar depression daily ( I'll be on Prozac for the rest of my life) and up until recently, have been floating through life.

Through school I was bullied, either being ugly, not fitting in, liking the right stuff, being s loner, or a geek were the things the popular kids didn't like, I didn't see them as problems but coupled with my awesome home life I didn't do so great at school.

College is sort of where I finally found my feet, I met several friends who I still know to this day and despite all my short comings I am married to a woman i have been with for 11 years this year (3 years married in August).

Throughout my life I have always been big, even when I was a kid my parents called me Stephen 5 bellies as I had several folds of fat (remember, awesome home life ) and with everything else I just never bothered to fix my weight, I gradually increased weight till early last year where I hit my heaviest of 21st10.

In January of last year I had my first visit to hospital for kidney stones, of which I was the proud father of two stones, I manged to pass one that was causing me serious pain, the other arrives a few months down the line, but before that...

In April I woke with some nasty back pain, being a typical bloke, and English (stiff upper lip chaps! Tally ho!) I went to work, in a few hours I was at home with agonising back pain. Two days later I collapsed and could only crawl around to move.

After getting to the hospital and being miss diagnosed, and spending two days in hospital, I'm sent home with... Wait for it... Back pain... (Free healthcare ain't all it's cracked up to be folks )

Anyway, after months of intense pain, I'm finally told I've herniated my L4 disc and need a spinal op to fix it, this takes nine months from the original visit to the hospital in April.

During that time the pain spiralled out of control and I ended up on about 60mg of morphine a day to even function with a pain rating of around 5/6 out of 10.

Anyway, the op was on the 23rd of December and was 100% successful, I have no pain and have been pain med free for about two and a half weeks.

Funnily enough, I decided just before April it's probably time to lose weight and I had lost half a stone by the time I had herniated my disc.

In June the second stone came to visit, thankfully it was easy to pass thanks to being on strong Cocodamol at the time.

So here I am, the other side of serious spinal surgery after a literal year from hell and I've decided it's time to make some serious changes to my life. Since my decision to lose weight I am down nearly two stone but I now want to get into exercising.

Obviously due to the disc and health concerns I can't go crazy with weights or anything like that but I'm just looking for some help, ice known about NF for a while but due to my health I couldnt do anything about it, however now I can.

I'm not going to join the academy at the moment as weights are probably out of my reach for a while (although is be happy if someone told me otherwise cause I used to love lifting), but I could really use some help even if just a nudge in the right direction.

Congratulations if you reached this point, and got through my terrible skills of typing on an iPhones keyboard, I'll tidy it up tomorrow probably.

So Hi and even if you don't reply, thanks for reading!

[lillucia]

Hey Stephen,

 

Fabulous to hear about your journey - you're a real overcomer, and you'll do great things.

Welcome to the boards and we look forward to reading about your progress!

 

Lucy

[FoxtrotOff]

Hi Illucia

 

Thanks for the post, i thought i'd generate more interest but i guess it is a long post heh, anyway good to be here.

 

Steve

[sylph]

So, you say you want to get into exercise, what's your plan?

[FoxtrotOff]

At the moment, due to only having surgery a month ago, my doctor has instructed me to ONLY do core exercises with no weights and walking, no high impact or lifting of weights, for now im happy to get through the rehab part of my life and move onto lifting further down the line. The doc said that would be about 4 months or so, this gives me plenty of time to work on my core and get my cardio fitness up.

 

I've started a log in the log area of NF, you're welcome to take a peak http://rebellion.nerdfitness.com/index.php?/topic/60181-steve-his-slipped-disc-rehab-onto-a-better-life/