The State of my Body

“Make it better.  Turn up the good, turn down the suck.  Turn down the suck knob… I think you got suck all the way cranked to 10, Farrel.  Right up to 10. Think you broke the knob off crankin it so hard.”  -Fubar

This blog is going to give you an idea of where I stand right now.  Any questions or ideas leave a comment.  Cheers.

Background: On Thanksgiving Day, 47 days ago, I compressed my back making a left footed turn in a GS course at Loveland, Colorado.  During that turn, my L4-5 and L5-S1 discs bulged to put pressure on my nerve and shut down over 50 percent of the power in my left leg.  Not soooo good for a ski racer.

How am I feeling: I’m making progress so things aren’t so bad.  It’s a bummer to not be pushing out of the starting gate right now, but that will certainly come when my body is ready.   I just have to focus on getting healthy and it should all work out.  As Robert Pastrana, the father of the most epic extreme sports athlete of all time Travis Pastrana, once said, “Sometimes it’s just your turn, suck it up.”  And he’s completely right.  I have been very lucky with minimal injuries and yeah this one sucks, but welcome to the world of sport.  Suck it up.

Doc:  I met with Dr. Karli for twenty minutes a couple days ago and he said, “I’m happy with your progress and you’re ahead of schedule.”  Dr. Karli explained that as long as we’re continuing to see improvement in my left leg strength, he’s not going to make any changes.  Since I do not have any pain in my back, at all, we’re not going to do any more injections.  So right now it’s just slow and steady territory.  As for surgery, since we’re seeing constant improvement he doesn’t want to go down that road.  If I hit a plateau then we’ll reconsider all the options.  Curious about the likely hood of this happening again, he explained that if we give the bulge time and the nerve starts refiring without surgery there is an increased chance of around 5 percent it will happen again.  If we did surgery and shaved off part of the bulge, the increased change of having this problem again is 8 percent.  However, Dr. Karli thought it was more like 15-20 percent since skiers put so much pressure on our backs.  Although he thinks that there isn’t pressure on the nerve anyone,  it just takes a time – everyone is different – for the nerve to start properly firing again.   He then mention that sometimes if there is too much damage the nerve don’t come back all the way, but I’m going to ignore that comment!  So we’re making headway it’s just not the fast and furious program I’d like.

Therapy:  When I was home for Christmas I was using a hanging vest for traction and was doing my exercises for the  most part. However, it’s great to be back at Howard Head in Vail, Colorado because the traction unit is much better and I’ve been spending between 3 and 4 hours a day doing traction, core workouts, and working out my left leg.

Skiing: I skied at my glorious home hill, Gunstock Mountain Resort, Gilford, NH, for 6 runs a couple days after New Year’s and it was amazing to ski again.  On the flats, I felt absolutely great free skiing, but when it rolled over a little bit on to moderately flat, Gunstock isn’t known for nasty terrain, I could tell my left leg isn’t strong enough.  In one situation, I had to heavily rely on my right leg to save me haha, but it just felt so good to be on snow bending up my skis.    Once the weather chills out, it’s been snowing here, I’m going to start skiing on some flat terrain at Vail.

Leg difference: I have lost 2 inches in circumference of my left leg compared to my right, which is not that cool when you look in the mirror haha.  Not cool at all.

Future: Right now I am certainly not ready to be racing.  I watched the two races in Adelboden, Switzerland the last two days and there is no way my body would be ready for that type of abuse right now.   I’m up to about 70 percent power in my left leg, which is certainly not enough to be racing in rugged conditions.  I’m going to keep working hard on PT and if I reach 100 percent power by the end of the month, I’ll be ready to start testing it and will reevaluate for the next three World Cup GS starts.   If that is not the case, I will file injury clause and call the season.  Since I only had 4 GS starts this season starting in New Zealand I can file for injury clause starting right after Soelden, which will bring my GS points from 6.0 to 6.6 and save my world cup points so I would have a guaranteed start for all of next season.  I’m not going to worry about my immediate future, I am going to focus on what matters at PT and hope that my nerve will let all of my left leg fire again soon.  I’d much much much rather be in Europe on tour than in Vail doing PT.

Special thanks to the people that have really helped me with this injury:  Dr. Karli, Dr. Viola, Mike Wahoff, Dr. Blaich, Dr. Wells,  Sarah Iafrate, Scott Wacker, Elli Rubenstein, Ian Lochhead, Leif Kristian Haugen, and Charles Christianson.

Cheers, w