Blog 57 Trying To Stay In Shape, But went Downhill

(During the Navy, I got involved in racquetball)

After weekly volleyball, bowling league, softball, and doing weight-lifting, I learned and enjoyed racquetball. I always loved tennis. So, it was nothing to keep doing them after I got out the Navy. I would easily say I was in the best physical shape ever.

As I began falling back into my old ways, I had a back injury. (No need to say it was from Darrell and his friend.) Since we were teenagers, Darrell would grab me in a bear hug, shake my body, popping my vertebrae. Boy it felt good. But, he got bigger (rounder) as we grew. To keep things short, I will get to the point. At a family get-together, when I was twenty-nine, Darrell came up on me and picked me up. Being bigger, he was no longer keeping my body straight. I yelled,”Darrell no!” But, he popped and I fell to the floor. His friend said “That is not how you do it, this is!”

Before I knew it, his friend was across my back, he placed his hands directly on my lumbar spine and pressed straight down on my back. I gave out a load scream. When I got up, I took a few steps and fell. My back was in a mess, but I tried to tough it out. However, I could not handle the pain. I had a ruptured L4 disc. I had to have surgery and was off work (unpaid) for four weeks. They started me on painkillers. This would be the beginning of a downward fall for me.

I had to go back to work because I had lost four weeks pay. It does not take long for your body to accept painkillers without making you drowsy, but enabled you to function painlessly. Once I felt stronger, I began being active again.

My brother, Bill (WOS), began a multi-church volleyball league. I was ready and willing to create a team. It was a coed league with three guys and three girls. A woman had to hit the ball at least once if the ball did not cross the net after one hit. The best way to play is to utilize three hits to help confuse the competition. I had two friends, a guy and a girl, who were very good players. The rest of the team had fit athletes that were all good at different things. We were well rounded.

Bill did two years of the league. One person from each team had to take a day course of how to officiate a game. This was a semi-serious league. When we won the first league. Bill strengthen his team for the next year. We lost a good player and I asked another friend to play with us and she did. We, also, got another girl (who I knew from school) that made us a very good team again.

Bill and I were always competitive and I never played just for the fun. I wanted to win. At the end of the league, Bill’s team and mine played the finals. It was a great game. We all were serious. We played the best we ever had before. My position was to get the ball to the setter, and I was setter when I was on the front line.

The final game got actually vicious and sometimes tense. I was on the back right corner when a serve surprised us and the first player miss hit the ball sending it way on my side out of bounds. I charged for the ball to bring it back in play, so I made a right-sided leap and did a backwards hit. When I fell to the ground, a did a roll from feet to head and bashed my head at an angle. I jumped back up and continued to play. After the point everyone was looking at me. They asked was I alright and I said yes. (It turned out that when I hit my head everyone heard a loud pop.) We finished the match undefeated.

The next day, I got up from bed, took about ten steps then fell and could not get up. When I got myself together, I had Robert take me to the emergency room and found that I had a chip of vertebral bone pushing against my nerve and had emergency surgery to have it fixed. They got the chip and fused my cervical spine. This took six weeks to heal and I had to where a neck brace. Again, I was given heavy painkillers.

One of the girls on the team was looking to share a home or apartment and Robert and I had the room at our house so she agreed to move in. We needed financial help due to my lost work. It worked for a while as I got better. She and I,also, went to church together and would sometimes eat dinner at her mom’s home. We had loads of funny stories to tell that had us laughing for hours. In my opinion, I could not see any hints that this relationship was beginning to be serious, until Robert and she started doing things to upset the other.

It was subtle until I realized that this friend thought I was available. Robert gave me an ultimatum that either she left or he would. I waited for the right time to talk to her that she should (and deserving) needed to ask for an hefty raise. She got the raise and was doing well. I took this time to talk with her about finding an apartment. She did not take the news well, but she did move.

Since my friend was moving, it put us in a very tight situation. I had to find work that paid a lot more than I was making . The paper had offers for short-term jobs (called permanent temporaries) all over the country. I applied for one that made TEN-DOLLARS an hour more than I made, paid for my gas, living situation, and extra money for food. I was in hog heaven.

What I did not know was that back at the house things were worsening. On the road, life was so calm, the jobs were easy, I learned new things, got paid well, and met many new friends.