Chronic pain no medical professional or witch doctor can diagnose [long post] Part 1

[Learning]

I broke the character limit with this post, so part 2 is here.

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General background

Age: 36
Weight: 170
Height: 5’10’’
BF%: 15

Introduction

I have not contributed much to these forums, but I have learned a lot from this community. I greatly enjoyed reading SS earlier this year, and look forward to a life of getting stronger using the SS methodology. What’s holding me back is chronic pain that has flared up to different degrees in my back, knees and shoulders over the past decade. I hate feeling fragile. I want to be a strong protector of my wife, a strong role model for my sons, and a health active person deep into my senior years. Because of my experience having my ability to train normally taken away, I experience such a deep and intense happiness at the thought of regaining the ability to live an active life where I can train, set goals, and share that experience with those that I care about.

I recently read through Austin Baraki’s Aches and Pains article and felt like it was telling my story – I’ve gone to multiple doctors, physical therapists, chiropractors, massage therapists, and various “new age” practitioners (Airrosti, acupuncture, etc.) in hope that the source of my pain can be identified and cured/reduced to a degree that would enable me to live a life where I can train and exercise like a healthy person. Every one of these practitioners claimed they found some problem, none of their fixes worked and a few actually made things worse. I view this post as a last ditch effort at seeking a “postural-structural-biomechanical” explanation for my pain. In a way, I’ve essentially already concluded that my pain does not have a classic physical explanation because it seems so unique, fickle and impervious to explanation, but I have missed something, and the SS community seems like just the group to identify that needle in a haystack. I’d greatly appreciate to hear anyone’s thoughts and experiences that may be relevant. Lately I’ve been getting into meditation, doing daily affirmations/prayers, and intensely visualizing the pain-free and strong life I want to be made manifest in myself, and I will likely continue to do so because of the hope it has brought to me.

So, for those willing to go down the rabbit hole, I’m going to give all the dirty details that I think could be potentially relevant to my pain. Thanks in advance for your time and thoughts. I’m particularly interested in hearing from the starting strength coach/doctor community and I’m happy to pay for a consult.

Phase 1: Pre-adulthood (ages 0-25)

I was always into sports as a kid – soccer, wrestling, baseball, karate, you name it – and I was always pretty good. When I got to middle school I anchored on football, wrestling and baseball. I didn’t like the people on the baseball team or the wrestling team, so my freshman year in high school I played football and ran track. I won my first few races in the 400m and found some great camaraderie on the track team, so I became very passionate about running. Toward the end of my freshman track season I ran a few longer distance races and decided to go whole hog into running. For the rest of high school I ran cross country and track. I ran all winter and all summer as well and I really enjoyed it. I was known for being big for a cross country runner, and my best races were actually the mid-distances (800m/1600m). Up until my senior year I had essentially never been injured ever in sports. One day I was running at night, didn’t see a pot hole, stepped in the pot hole and injured my right knee. I was out for about 6 weeks doing physical therapy, then got back to running. Later in my senior year I collapsed during warm-ups at a practice thinking I was having a heart attack. I was rushed to the hospital and I was diagnosed with a spontaneous pneumothorax (a collapsed lung with no external cause like a bullet or knife, my lung just popped). No surgery was required, it just re-inflated to 100% over a couple months and I was back out running.

I did pretty well at running in high school, and I was passionate about it, so I decided to run cross country and track in college as well. My college career did not go well to say the least. I went to college in a city, ran on lots of pavement, and I essentially never made it through a full year without my knees getting injured. I was diagnosed with patellar tendonitis, and I’m pretty sure that’s what it was, but I didn’t hold back. I rehabbed and got back out running 80 miles a week, and used a lot of ice and NSAIDs in the process. It was stupid, period. I finally quit at the end of my junior year because I was sick of being injured.

After I quit, I ran about 3-5 miles a day, 5x a week, slower pace than when I was competing, and took up weight lifting with intensity (90 minutes 5-6 days a week). I had no idea what I was doing. I only did upper body work because I thought my legs were taken care of with the running. I did chest work, arm work and shoulder work, usual stupid stuff uninformed by SS and similar lifting philosophies. I did a lot of bench pressing and wide grip pull ups, with likely very bad form and eventually injured my shoulder and had to stop. If I had to guess, I would say I was causing shoulder impingement with my form. I recovered from that injury in a month or so, and then just lifted casually – 1-2 times per week, never increasing weight, just maintaining – and kept running.

I went to law school and stopped working out as much because of the time my studies and other activities took. I ran for my first year, did pushups and sit ups now and then, but really decreased the frequency of my physical activity. No major injuries at all during the laws school years.

Also, during my law school years I developed gasteropareisis. It happened during my 2nd year internship. Essentially every time I would eat a big meal I’d be in pain for many hours feeling like the food was just stuck in my stomach. I’d get a globus sensation in the back of my throat and have to simply wait for it to go away.

Phase 2: Adulthood – onset of chronic pain (ages 25-34)

I started working and got married. Went for a run every now and again, did some push-ups and pull-ups every now and again, but nothing serious.

One day I decided I needed to start training more seriously, so I started lifting 3 days a week and running during my lunch hour at work. Within a month, my patellar tendonitis came back in my knees so I stopped running, but I kept lifting. I was doing bench, stiff legged deadlifts (at the recommendation of a friend), and pull ups. Then I came across something online that I regret deeply to this very day – P90x. I was intrigued by the idea and the intensity. So I bought the program and did it for a month. After the first week I noticed a light throbbing in my knees from all the jumping, lunging and air squatting, the next week the pain continued to increase so I cut the jumping out completely because it hurt too much when I hit the ground. Still, I enjoyed the program and felt like I was getting stronger, so I kept at it, just making small modifications so I wasn’t jumping in the air or taxing the knees so much. After the first month my knees we essentially always throbbing with pain. It was stupid, period, but I pushed through it. Then I started month 2 and the day after a pull up routine I felt a very sharp intermittent pain deep in the joint of one of my shoulders. I had never had a pain like it before and I was quite concerned. It was not there all the time, but it would hit me 10-15 times a day and feel like the inside of my shoulder was falling apart very sharply and very specifically located in a small area deep in the shoulder joint right near the socket. At this point I decided to stop the program and recover. This was essentially the beginning of my chronic pain. I waited for a solid 3-4 months for the pain to go away and it essentially did not. It decreased in intensity by maybe 50-60% from its peak, but I was essentially walking around all day with moderately throbbing knees and shoulders that felt like they were being stabbed from the inside multiple times a day. This was extremely depressing for me as it was the first set of injuries I ever had that didn’t simply go away from rest. I had a few false starts trying to train again doing my same old pre-P90x workouts, but the pain seemed to rise again after the workout. Then I made another decision I regret to this day, I tried some situps in a position where I put my back in a great degree of extension. A few days later I started to feel my first back pain. The best way I can describe it is that it was in the mid-back, not the lumbar area, and it was truly in the spine itself. It would vary in its exact location and intensity from day to day, but it always was there unless I was laying down comfortably in bed. No impact on my sleep at this point, but it was the most frustrating when I was at work.

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Part 2 is here.

[Learning]

Part 2 is here.