My name is Ross Yingling (more about me HERE) and I live with chronic pain.  If you suffer from chronic pain you need to hang on because we are a kindred spirit and I don’t plan to hold back.

Since 2003 I’ve experienced quit a bit of life altering events.  It looked something like this:

  • Three back and neck surgeries (2 with fusion), the second back surgery took 4 months of downtime to feel kinda ok again;
  • An anxiety driven episode that led to a hospital stay;
  • Diagnosed with severe Fibromyalgia;
  • Fired from my job; and to top things off (for now)
  • Four weeks ago I feel in my home and broke my LEFT humerus bone at the shoulder…a vertical break where the rotator cuff attaches to the LEFT humerus bone.  I emphasize LEFT arm because, you could guess it, I’m very LEFT handed!!  The Orthopedic Surgeon told me it was the most painful type of arm break and it would take anywhere from 4-6 months to heal…surgery wasn’t required, but I will have some permanent range of motion loss.

That’s my high level resume for being qualified to talk about chronic pain.  I hope some of the things I’ve learned will at the very least spark honest, heartfelt discussion about pain and how it affects your life and the lives of those around you.  Living with chronic pain can take you to a very lonely place and keep you hostage!!

My real journey with pain started at the age of 41.  February 2003 when I stepped out of my truck at my son’s soccer practice.  A sharp pain jumped down my right leg and ended in my foot.  It didn’t last long, but it sent a message that I would soon understand to be the beginning of my life with chronic pain.  As the days and weeks passes the pain grew stronger and more persistent.

In April 2003 I decided it was time to do something about it so I complained to my Doctor and we got an MRI.  As my long line of luck would have it, there was no obvious reason for the pain, but it wasn’t getting any better and I wasn’t about to “just live with it” as one Doctor suggested.  So I persisted and finally a Neurosurgeon was convinced that something was wrong and on June 30, 2003, I had an L4/L5 Laminectomy (without no fusion).

The recovery was 3-4 weeks before I felt like doing anything and about 6 weeks before I felt “sort of normal” again.  I returned to work after 7 weeks and it seemed that life might in fact be on the fast track as I was accustomed…High Speed Low Drag was our motto and I was one of the guys who solved problems and just got things done on some very large accounts.

I thought it was all pretty good until early October when I started to experience a level of pain that made the pain from February seem like a stroll through the park.  From here life started to get very “interesting”.  In the next few posts I will begin to lay out what the pain began to do to my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual being.  I also plan to redo a journal I kept between the time between the first and second back surgeries…at times it was a dark commentary on the world of intense chronic pain.

Find your happy place and escape (as long as it’s legal)…