Today, I ventured forth in the middle of a monsoon storm (That trapped me in a small neighborhood for half an hour) to my doctors appointment for the ominous news of my spine.
So while I wasn’t able to get as much discussion in as I would have liked (I was almost half an hour late), the deal is: Physical Therapy for 7 weeks. From what I have read, bulging discs have something like a 90% recovery rate with no pain. What is not clear however, is what this means for the martial arts going forward.
I’m not supposed to have any contact to the head or body for those 7 weeks at least. Doc was pretty serious about it too. I’m going to talk to the PT people about what the prognosis is for ongoing training during the sessions. Considering that Tito Ortiz had a full out fight with Forrest Griffin while nursing a lumbar disc bulge, and supposedly has completely recovered, I have a lot of hope that I’ll be able to train normally again after the PT. Of course, Tito might have just gotten steroid shots and is willing to deal with ongoing problems later on in order to be able to fight.
Thankfully, it’s not bad enough that I’m having any issues in day to day stuff. Really I’m just whining about a reduced ability to train. So not really a huge deal here.