The Reluctant Blogger

Today I had a series injections of anesthetics and steroids in my spine. These are supposed to temporarily relieve my pain over the next two or three weeks. After that, we get to see if I am still in pain, and how bad it is, and that will be the lead determining factor of whether I go in for a discectomy to take care of the herniated disc. The discectomy would be a minimally invasive micro endoscopic procedure, which depending on the results may or may not be an outpatient procedure.

The shots I had today were painless, and the radiologist who administered them was amazing. The hard part though was lying on my stomach long enough to receive the injections. This three minutes of lying on my stomach was probably one of the most painful experiences of my life. My back just can not support that position right now. But relief came quickly afterward, so the three minutes of extreme pain was worth it.

What I’m hoping for, of course, is that after three weeks and the wearing off of the steroid injection, that the ejected disc material pushing up against my sciatic nerve will have been reabsorbed or receded away from my nerves. That’s really the source of all this pain; not the rupturing of the disc, but rather the pressing on and displacement of my lumbar nerves. If I’m not in pain after that, I can start some more serious physical therapy and hopefully get some strength back. But the radiologists reaction to my MRI was not encouraging, and he gave the impression that any relief he could offer would only be temporary. Only time will tell.

New England Baptist Hospital was impressive though. No smoking anywhere on their campus, super clean and modern, all the support staff were in suits… it just felt like a very well run operation.

In light of all this JobVent.com prospecting goes well… I’ve had several good conversations over the last few days. The power of online social networking in situations like this is becoming extremely clear. LinkedIn and Twitter have been indispensable.

I’m trying to sell JobVent.com. Here’s why.

About a week ago, I had an MRI, which revealed a 19.4mm herniation in the disc between my L4 and L5 vertebrae. What happens when you have a disc herniation is that the outer casing of the disc ruptures, and the gel within the disc is forced out. In some cases, the herniation is bad enough that it puts a great deal of pressure on the nerves that run through the back of the spine. This is currently what is happening to me.

Walking is now difficult, sitting in a chair even more so. And we software developers, well, we like to sit in chairs. I’m comfortable when standing, but only after standing for about 10 minutes.

It seems more and more likely that I will be having spinal surgery to address this problem. We’ll find out after I talk to several surgeons.

After the family tragedy we went through this winter, and the pain I am going through right now, its becoming more and more difficult for me to find energy and time to maintain JobVent.com. I find myself with several new main focuses in my life, and these are as follows:

1. Recover. Be it through surgery or physical therapy or a combination of the two, I simply cannot function while in this much pain. My main goal right now is the restoration of my own physical health.
2. Family. We had a very tough winter, but we go on. My wife is my world. We will have children.
3. Work. I write great software, and my main focus is mobile development. I enjoy it, I work with an amazing team, and we’re going to continue building amazing products for multiple platforms.

Unfortunately, as you see, JobVent.com does not make the list. So if you, or someone you know is interested in acquiring what turns out to be a fairly popular website, please, send me an email. I’ll answer any questions you have.