2013 - 2014 Catch Up!
So, I made a goal to update here frequently, but it's been a year & a half since my post. Whoops!
2013 was a great year -- I finished my degree (had only been a few classes short for all those years, so it felt awesome to wrap it up!), took a great promotion to HR & Recruiting Manager at a new games studio in Austin, and got engaged!
I met a lot of goals and felt great about my progress in other areas of life, but unfortunately my back pain (due to a herniated disc) remained a central theme in all things health and fitness. I continued to work out, taking breaks from CrossFit to run more and try yoga. Nothing really changed. I continued to get steroid injections in my back to try to minimize the pain (and continue to be active), but the last round of shots I had was incredibly painful (and traumatic, to be honest) and I decided it was time to make a plan for longer-term pain relief. For context, I'd tried so many alternative-to-surgery pain relief options: physical therapy, airrosti, ART, stretching, acupuncture, yoga, running, not running, lifting, not lifting, spine-stretching machines, spinal injections, etc. After all those years (10+!), the only thing I never picked up was pain medicine -- I knew if I started that, it would be way too easy to become reliant on the relief.
In 2014, my pain had become chronic and was severe enough that I couldn't sit through a 2 hour movie anymore. I knew it was time to see a spinal surgeon and evaluate our options for relief. I was very lucky that another CrossFitting friend had recently had a spinal surgery and recommended Dr. James Smith at Central Texas Spine here in Austin. Brian and I met with him several times, reviewed the MRIs, and eventualy decided to move forward with spinal fusion on my L5/S1 discs in hopes of getting me back to a normal (and active) life. We had a couple things to do first, though!
1) Get married! We weren't sure how long my recovery would be (or what that would look like), so we planned to put off surgery until after our wedding. We had a truly magical, beautiful wedding and reception and are still blown away when we look back at the photos. We had the kind of wedding I had always dreamed of! We're putting the honeymoon off until I can sit for longer on a plane (I'll get into that in the next post)!
2) Buy a house! We were so lucky to have Lisa Munoz (fellow CrossFitter!) as our realtor -- because we are slightly crazy, we closed on our house Friday, February 28th, and got married Saturday, March 1st! We love the house (and Ed and Ollie do, too)!
For what happened next: stay tuned!
