My last major spine surgery was in May, 2019. I spent 6 weeks out of work, and I went back on light duty. I noticed early on that I couldn’t keep up with the duties of my job. I was struggling very badly and not really healing. Add to that some intense workplace politics that were working against me, and I ended up crawling to the finish line when I finally put in my notice.
As I was dealing with my spine issues for the prior 3 years, I always had the idea of needing to move into an RV of some sort since I wasn’t able to work and pay my bills. That turned into a massive fear for me. I ended up building a camper van out of a Mercedes Sprinter cargo van. I moved into the van full time in September of that year. I still hadn’t experienced any healing or recovery from the surgery.
I had traveled around the the West Coast during the autumn and early winter. I ended up in Yuma, AZ near the end of December. The van was built as a “Stealth Van”, which means it was meant to blend in and not draw any attention from anyone. I was able to park the van wherever I wanted and live undetected for free. When I went to Yuma, I stayed at an RV park for a bit because I was a bit tired of the stealth camping. I remember only being able to walk about 1 block total after I got there. I was very reliant on my cane.
There are loads of RV and mobile home parks in Yuma, and most of the parks near where I stayed had citrus trees. People were putting out bags of grapefruits (one of my favorite fruits) because they had too many from their trees. I was on a walk the day before Christmas Eve, and I grabbed half a bag of grapefruits and went back to my van and ate 3 of them. Then I felt amazing. Absolutely amazing, for the first time since the surgery. I felt good because I felt pain relief. Then I started feeling the healing happening.
I kept eating grapefruits, and I kept feeling better. I started reading about it and discovered the whole food, plant based diet. The best I can figure is that I was completely starved for nutrition because of a bad diet. This is a big problem for chronic pain patients. Once I started flooding my body with nutrition, I kick-started it into healing mode. I finally started healing from the surgery I had 7 months prior.
On New Year’s day, only 9 days later, I walked to the grocery store, which was 1 mile away. I used my cane and took a rest at the store, but it was a major increase in physical activity. I ended up walking about 2 miles a day before I left Yuma. I ended up somewhere in South Texas after Yuma. It took several days of traveling to get there, and by the time I got there, my progress was set back a bit. I could only walk about 2 blocks at a time. I quickly increased the activity again and I was soon doing about 1.5 mile walks with the cane. Then I started the walks with the cane, but picked it up and carried it until the end of the walk when I started getting tired. It was a very happy day when I finally ditched the cane.
About a week after putting the cane away, I joined a gym. I fully committed to the whole food, plant based diet. I read a couple books about it and it convinced me that was the best diet I could have. It was a difficult transition, but I continued to feel great, so I pushed on. Once you get past the first week of the diet, it becomes easy, and you get an unbelievable amount of energy.
I ended up back in Yuma a while later. I was still recovering, still healing, still feeling better. At the end of the recovery period, I was either doing 1 hour of cardio plus a quick weight machine circuit, then two 2.5 mile walks; or two 2.5 mile walks plus a 5 mile walk at the end of the day. I went from around 210 pounds to 190 in about 9 weeks. I was exhausted every night and got great sleep.
One trick I came up with was a bit of cognitive behavior training. When I felt anxious, I went for a walk. If I felt toxic hunger, I went for a walk. If I was super bored, I went for a walk. This extra walking probably added another mile or two every day. I was trying to make my brain equate feeling hungry outside of mealtime with exercise. Eventually I became trained to not expect any food outside of mealtime. The anxious feeling never really went away, but pushing through it and burning it off by getting in a walk or some exercise has become a very useful tool.
Right when I was at the end of my recovery, COVID hit. That put a big damper on the walking mileage I was able to do, and all the gyms closed. I ended up in a small town called Fort Bragg, CA. It’s about 3 hours north of San Francisco, and it was always my favorite vacation spot. I lived in the van for several more months, and ended up living there for a year and a half.
I was faithful to my whole food, plant based diet for a year and a half. After about a year, it stopped helping me in any way. I redoubled my efforts and went even stricter, but it didn’t really do anything. The pain was returning and the diet couldn’t stop it. After a year and a half, I realized the diet wasn’t helping me in any way anymore, so I stopped. I didn’t feel any worse pain-wise after I stopped the diet.
I’ll answer the obvious question: “Have I tried this diet and exercise routine to try to get myself back on track?” I have, multiple times, without good result. The difference between then and now is that back then I had a recent surgery. Once I started on the good diet, it started a healing response and helped give me the energy and relief I needed. This time, there is no surgery or long lasting procedure that I can recover from. There is nothing that would help provoke a healing response. It’s a good idea though, and I recommend it to anyone.
I have recently been trying to eliminate certain foods from my diet to see if it helps the fibromyalgia. Some fibromyalgia patients on forum sites say there are certain foods that flare up their fibromyalgia. They usually say gluten, dairy, alcohol, caffeine, and sometimes nightshade vegetables cause issues. I’m testing gluten and dairy right now. I have had very mixed results, just as I did when I went full whole food, plant based. Pain also flares up fibromyalgia, so it could be that the diet worked, but I just didn’t realize it. Elimination diets are always worth a try.
As far as recovery, I also recommend a sort of “reverse engineering” approach. Think about all the things you would be doing if you felt good. For me, I would be walking a lot, riding my exercise bike, eating very well, listening to music, visiting my dad, playing video games. Now start doing as many of those things as you can, even though you feel terrible. Some of them might make you feel better physically. Most should make you feel better mentally. Some of them might make you feel a little normal because you are following your normal practices. In my experience, reverse engineering only has limited success. If there is a major mechanical issue in your body that needs to be fixed, or needs attention, then reverse engineering won’t have any sustained success. If you don’t have a major mechanical issue, or that issue has been fixed, then this is a good way to help jump start a recovery or a comeback.
An even different version of this is to think about all the bad habits the pain has forced you into. Not being able to get out of bed, watching TV in bed and developing bad sleep hygiene, eating microwaved food because that’s all you can do, doom scrolling, watching certain internet or TV content you never normally would, spending too much time on the internet, etc. If the reverse engineering method was to focus on good things and do them more often, then this version is to focus on the bad things and eliminate them, or try to not do them as much. It takes a long time to break bad habits, so this takes a lot of time and effort. These bad habits can become toxic, and at the very least, bad reminders of the worst times. We do a lot of things for survival, they might be necessary during the worst times, but we need to make sure we dump those bad habits as soon as we can – either to force a recovery, or as a result of a natural recovery.
There are many ways to recovery from a major surgery. My methods were mainly the tried and true classics: Diet and exercise. The whole food, plant based diet is very powerful because it floods your body with nutrition. You only eat nutritious foods and cut out all foods that might weigh you down (figuratively and literally). A good exercise routine is also essential to get your body moving again and strengthen it as well. After very long periods of disability, some cognitive behavioral training may also be very helpful to break bad habits and get back to the positive things in your life you enjoy. It’s all extremely hard work, but when you start feeling the results and are confident you are finally on the road to recovery, it’s all completely worth it.