Going green wasn't such a great idea!

For several years I drove my Chevy Venture minivan for the business, and after realizing I was spending waaaay too much on gas, I sold it and bought a nice new little Honda Civic Hybrid in the fall of 2009. I was doing my net income and the environment a big favour, or so I thought.

Virtually immediately, as I realized in hindsight, I started having mild lower back discomfort, but figured I was merely getting old. Just lump it Ken and take more Ibuprofen. I'm 6'1" (or used to be until my spine started compressing and my arches started falling, so I had to bend over and scrunch down quite a bit to get into the driver's seat. Once in there was plenty of headroom so no worries, right?

Well the fact is I have a 31 inch inseam, the same as Heather who is only 5'4". Therefore I'm really disproportionately (I don't know if that's a real word but it works) longer in the trunk so I've had to scrunch up more than the average person. (No wise cracks about what I mean by trunk guys!) There was lot's of extra wear and tear on the back as a result over the next one and a half years, with the pain steadily increasing.

Then I challenged the odds and the gods by going back to Portugal for another vacation. There was lots of walking on cobblestone streets, up and down hills, and a lot of driving in a sub-compact rent-a-car. When I arrived home I was in considerable discomfort with frequent bouts of stabbing pain shooting through my buttocks and down my hamstrings and quadriceps.

Like any other internet-savvy 21st century geek I did a lot of Google-ing and self-diagnosed myself with sciatica. What - don't tell me you don't do that as well, be honest. And that was really weird because I always thought the word was Sci-Attica, and meant some freaky futuristic outer-space maximum security prison from something like the Blade Runner movie???

My family doctor tappity-tapped my knee joints with that dumb little reflex hammer then prescribed an industrial strength anti-inflammatory and Tylenol 3 - AKA T3, neither of which helped much. After also trying lots of stretching and spending a small fortune on chiropractor, massage therapy and acupuncture sessions I pretty much decided nothing was going to help and that I better learn to live with it.

So in 2011, in a fit of self-destruction I spent a week's vacation in Key West, and later another week in Orlando, naively half-believing that I just needed a little more exercise. Hah! What an idiot! All you do is walk in those places. Fortunately there were a lot of bars and liquor stores, and frequent stops to self-medicate were required.

My good friend Paul convinced me to seek out another professional opinion for my problem, and directed me to the Sports & Spinal Injury Clinic in Ottawa. What's great about the SSIC is that you need not be referred by a doctor - just phone and make an appointment. I was met by Dr. Bernie Lalonde, who essentially performs a preliminary diagnosis and triage to recommend physiotherapy or get you referred to another specialist such as in my case, an Orthopedic surgeon.

Things were finally starting to look promising...