Help For Bryan's Injured Back

One morning in the August of 2020, I woke up and my right foot felt like a lead weight at the end of my leg. I thought it was plantar fasciitis. I thought I would be over it in a couple of weeks at most.

 

I was wrong.

 

My name is Bryan Rye and I have been struggling with a case of sciatica for nearly two years. If you don't know what sciatica is, I'm happy for you. My advice is to never hurt your back so that you won't have to find out.

 

Sciatica usually comes about due to some impingement on the sciatic nerve in the lower back. You can find it around the L4, L5, S1 area of the spine. The sciatic never runs from your lower back down your butt, down both legs, all the way to your toes. It's very important and you don't want to make it mad – as it is able to deliver you plain along half of your body.

 

This is a fact I learned through personal experience.

 

A History of the Injury

At the end of March, 2020 during the height of the pandemic, I was laid off from my job due to lack of sales at the company I worked at. They experienced an 80% drop in sales in March and I was one of 40 people of a two hundred something team that was let go.

 

By the summer, my wife and I had decided to stop hemorrhaging money paying rent and move our family – myself, my wife, and our two young sons 3 and 1 in with my parents.

 

That left the burden of moving as much of our stuff as possible on me. My wife has a leg condition that set in after the birth of our first son and there was a lot of fear of exposure to Covid that left me isolated with the job. So I did the work: boxes, furniture, trash disposal, and clearing out as much of my parents' basement as possible. We had a 1200sq ft apartment and my parents have a ledge you can crouch up on to pack with stuff.

 

Somewhere in there I started to have consistent warning signs in my upper back. So I popped Advil and kept going – no one was going to come do the work for us.

 

Then, with the move complete, that morning in August came when my foot wasn't right. Symptoms piled up quick after that: when I tried to sleep it felt like something was out of place in the small of my back, I began to have burning pain in my toes, my hamstrings tightened sharply, my legs hurt when I tried to drive, I couldn't sit or lie down on most

surfaces, and standing for even a few seconds quickly brought on steadily mounting pain. Passing a platter of food across the table was risky at best. Even a heavy book or a bag of groceries became daunting to consider lifting – would that object cause me further injury if I picked it up?

 

And I couldn't hold up my sons standing up. I certainly couldn't rock my youngest to sleep.

 

It was all quite depressing and discouraging. Much of the burden of our day-to-day family existence shifted to my wife as I could no longer do most of the things that I had done in terms of caring for the kids, cleaning up around the house, cooking, and washing dishes (when you have sciatica, dishes is one of the most harrowing experiences you can consider). And with my wife’s continued leg condition, it was extremely difficult just to get through each day.

 

Still, everything I read told me I could probably get out of trouble in 4 weeks, a few months tops – if it was only a mild case of sciatica. So, we went to see a chiropractor on my primary doctor’s recommendation.

 

A History of Care

The first chiropractor I saw (I have seen three in two different states) told me that I had likely slipped several disks in my lower back (the L4, L5, S1 disks I mentioned earlier). He explained to me that all of the pain I was experiencing: the burning toes, the tightness in my hamstrings, and the pain in my lower back was all from the same spot. It was all referral from the nerve, messages being sent along its length from the point of the injury.

 

He cracked my back, got me good inserts for my shoes, gave me exercises and stretches to do, showed me where and how to ice, told me to walk as much as I could, and had me come in multiple days a week for adjustments. With his help (and my devotion to the regimen) some of the symptoms were reduced – but still the condition persisted.

 

So, after hearing about the wonders of an inversion table from a friend, we bought one of those too. It became a daily ritual for me hang from ankles in the morning and the evening for 2 minutes at a time, so as to put my back in traction and get some relief. Inverting before bed became critical for about a year if I was going to be able to fall asleep.

 

I stuck to my exercise and stretch routine. I laid in bed with ice an icepack at least 5 times a day often for 20 minutes at a time. I walked in the house or in the yard for at least half-an-hour a day. I sat in my chair or laid on the floor most of the day, playing with the boys as best I could.

By Christmas Eve, I could hold my youngest son again for short periods.

 

Out to Michigan

But even with dogged persistence and multiple adjustments for months, the condition wouldn't go away. And by March of 2021, my family and I were desperate. My wife’s leg condition was terribly aggravated, and my back continued to plague me. We set out from Connecticut to go live with my wife's parents in Michigan for a season.

 

In Michigan we sought out a new chiropractor and continued the care for both of us. The story remained the same: I could get relief but no cure. Still, we stuck in the fight. A friend of mine had informed me it took him 18 months to recover from a back injury like mine – and all he did was planks and walks. Surely if I just kept doggedly at it, I would get better.

 

And there were improvements. I could help some with dishes, pick toys up, bring in a bag of groceries, pass the potatoes. My wife and I went even out to eat in a restaurant for several special occasions and all we had to do was bring my cushion.

 

 

By August of 2021, we had an opportunity to head back to Connecticut and rent an apartment. If someone had told me that one of the worst things you can do is drive a long distance and push through the pain to get it done, we would have come across the country in 5 days instead of 2. But I thought I would bounce back.

 

I was wrong again.

 

Back in Connecticut

At first, I just stuck to my routine in our new apartment but my condition steadily worsened. So, we found our third chiropractor. She told me that all the exercises I was doing weren't really helping because the nerve was inflamed. Apparently, if the nerve is a mess, you don't get benefit from working the muscles involved.

 

In addition to adjustments, she gave me some nutritional guidance. I started taking supplements and tried to avoid inflammation. We were looking for anything that would help. Somewhere around here I began to consider surgery – but back surgery isn't something that you decide to enter in lightly. If there was some other way that I could recover, we were willing to do it.

 

For months I held even: Never recovering more but able to function in a limited capacity. Standing was still a trial, my hamstrings were painfully tight from the moment I started getting around every morning, and I could only sit in my office chair (with special cushion) or lie in bed. So, the office chair went with us in the back of the van whenever we had to go somewhere that required I sit.

 

Then, around March of 2022, I took a turn for the worse. Nothing was working. None of the stretches, exercises, or walking pushed back my symptoms. I was just in pain all the time. Thankfully, my wife’s leg condition suddenly greatly improved around the same time – which was a great relief. But without my ability to function in the home and provide childcare, she found herself worn out caring for everyone in the house.

 

We needed a change and my older sister, Marlene Rye, recommended a physical therapist in Massachusetts that she researched. They specialize in sciatica and have a track record of actually curing people after a 10 visit plan of care.

 

So we went.

 

A Hope of Recovery

It's discouraging, to say the least, being told that everything that you've been doing so diligently for the last two years to make yourself better, hasn't really been making any positive difference.

 

In fact, you may have been hurting yourself and prolonging the injury. Dr. Miguel at Move Athletics in Springfield, Massachusetts explained to me exactly what was going on with my condition in a way that some of the chiropractors were able to gesture at but never quite define.

So, the problem with my back is really divided into three issues.

Each of those three pieces needs to be addressed in turn before I can get out of pain and keep away from reinjury.

 

And so on the first day that I worked with Dr. Miguel, he had me do a simple unloading exercise where I laid on my back, put my hands on my hips and pushed lightly till I felt some separation down at the base of my spine. I held that for 5 seconds then did that eight times. When I stood up, I was without any pain standing for the first time in nearly two years.

 

I broke down in tears.

 

From there, we started on other exercises to try to reduce the neural load and continue to find ways to prevent re-injuring the nerve:

 

How I sit in the car, how I get out of bed (log roll is the way), how I think about bending over – even when I'm brushing my teeth over the sink, ways I can stand to relieve tension.

 

The amount of relief I’ve experienced in the last 3 weeks has been incredible.

 

The plan of care with Move Athletics is a 10 session program. The first several sessions are weekly and then after that it's every other week. The total cost comes to around $3,000.

 

We can get a discount by paying the sum up front and we have decided to take that route, even though at this time we don't have the funds for the care that I need. Thankfully, over the last two years, we’ve been able to pay for our medical care and day-to-day through a combination of savings, government stimulus, gifts from friends and family, and what we’ve been able to make with our respective crafts.

 

We are very grateful to have these funds, and we have worked hard to bring in more consistent income through self-employment as we have been able.

 

We tried for government assistance months ago, but the way the system works you basically have to have nothing left in savings before you can even apply. So here we are. With the worsening of my symptoms in the past two months, my wife has had to severely cut back on how many hours she works at her art business—which led us directly into the crisis we are in right now. We’re currently awaiting approval for government assistance for food. In the meantime, we’re getting some additional family help with food, but we’re essentially living art sale by sale, and gift by gift.

 

We need help. That's why we're launching a GoFundMe.

 

How You Can Help

Any money you give will go towards the 10 sessions of care to help keep us out of debt.

 

We will be posting weekly updates on the improvements and advances that we make through each of the stages of care.

 

Any money given beyond the amount that we need to fund the GoFundMe will go towards food, rent, and other necessary expenses as we have run out of money. Even with our application for government assistance currently awaiting approval, we can't afford our daily expenses.

That means any support that we can get now, while I can't work and my wife is helping care for me and the kids, can be put towards keeping us afloat and out of debt until we can get back to work. That's why this is so critical. And we need a community of supporters to help buoy us up during this period of recovery.

 

We'd hoped that we would be done recovering after two years, and that with diligence, hard work, and persistent care we would be back on our feet. Yet clearly, the two-year mark doesn't count if you're doing the wrong things to get better – no matter how diligently.

 

And so now that we're doing the right things and seeing the right kind of results, the kind that gives you hope, we're asking for help. We hope that you'll be part of that. We’re so hopeful.