Bed BACK and Beyond
Sharing positive stories of recovery after a herniated disc or other spinal cord injury. Join herniated disc champion CK as she has informative and encouraging conversations with other back injury survivors. From people who elected to have back surgery (microdiscectomy, laminectomy, fusion, etc) to those who used more conservative methods, plus all things in between, join our podcast, and let's talk about how life can move beyond the bed after injury. If you are dealing with the isolation and despair that often accompanies a serious back or neck injury, then you'll love being a part of these stories of hope and recovery.
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Bed BACK and Beyond
Brewing Strength: Eric's Triumph Over Chronic Pain
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What happens when a professional brewer's back gives out, and he's left immobilized for weeks? Eric Stuhlmacher's journey from severe back pain to resilience offers valuable lessons for anyone dealing with chronic pain. In this episode, Eric shares the raw, emotional highs and lows of living with a herniated disc. From a sudden immobilizing incident in February 2021 to another painful flare-up in August 2022, Eric's story is a testament to the power of perseverance. We delve into his commitment to physiotherapy, the physical and emotional challenges he faced, and the strategies that ultimately helped him manage his pain and reclaim his life.
Hear practical advice on managing chronic back pain, including effective home exercises that target hip flexors and hamstrings. Learn about the emotional toll of being unable to participate in family activities and how stress can exacerbate physical pain. Eric also touches on his personal experiences with cortisone injections, significant lifestyle changes, and his ambitious goals like backcountry snowboarding and pursuing a career in firefighting. Finally, we explore Eric's passion for brewing, his career transition, and how his journey can inspire others facing similar struggles. Don't miss this episode filled with hope, determination, and actionable insights.
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Recovery Stories of Serious Back Injury
Speaker 1I remember kind of just having this weird sensation in my glute and I didn't really think much of it. It wasn't painful, it was just kind of odd and I just figured it was kind of strained and I did kind of stop. I did stop training for a bit but then the pain, like the sensation, turned to pain relatively quickly and it was clear something was wrong, because there was a lot of pain in the glute and then down the back of my thigh and it was at the point where, like you know, laying down and sitting was very uncomfortable.
Speaker 2Bed Back and Beyond was created specifically to share personal stories of recovery from serious injury with the hopes of being an encouragement to you. Injury with the hopes of being an encouragement to you. If hearing inspiring and touching stories of personal triumph is something you enjoy, I would love to introduce you to the podcast Multispective. Multispective is a podcast that interviews people with a personal story over triumph and adversity. This not only includes injury stories, but also stories of trauma, abuse, addiction and survival. Jennica, the host, walks with each guest through their experience, introducing us to someone who is wiser and stronger from it. Please enjoy the multispective trailer.
Speaker 3Everything from within me just cracked open and I fell into that cesspool of darkness. I'm Jenica, host and writer of Multispective. Multispective is a podcast where we interview individuals around the world with unique, true, dark human stories and experiences. Guests share in details some of the mental health and traumas they faced. She would wait till I would get sound asleep and then come in and jump on me and start punching me. Decisions they've made For me as a social worker to think that we need to euthanize a child. That was for me to think, okay, I'm no longer in this field. And, more importantly, how they found strength, resilience and healing. There really was about finally getting to a point where I thought it doesn't matter what the norm is. What matters is how I feel and in many respects, it's all that matters. All that matters is how I feel about it. I'm in control and I'm in control of me. Tune in, subscribe, rate and review Multispective on wwwmultispectiveorg or YouTube or your preferred podcasting app. You can also find us on any of the social media platforms that you use.
Speaker 4Welcome to Bed Back. Beyond sharing positive stories of recovery from serious back or neck injury, your host is CK, a fellow champion who draws on her own experience with herniated disc surgery. Join her as she talks with others who have overcome the physical and emotional trauma of a painful injury and discover for yourself how you can find hope and encouragement in recovery.
Speaker 2Hi Eric. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode of Bed, back and Beyond. Before we talk about your herniated disc, how about you just introduce yourself?
Speaker 1Yeah, my name is Eric Stuhlmacher. I live in Canada, alberta, canada. Yeah, some of my hobbies I like doing skateboarding, snowboarding, golf. I'm also a father of uh, two little girls keep me really busy. And, yeah, and what I do for work is I'm a professional brewer, so I make make beer for a living. Been doing that for about eight years now oh, what part of canada is alberta in?
Speaker 2remind me please uh.
Speaker 1So we are just uh east of british columbia. So okay, b BC is just our neighbors to the west.
Speaker 2Okay, I just got back from Banff in June.
Speaker 1Yeah, that's Alberta.
Speaker 2Yeah, amazing yeah.
Speaker 1It's a beautiful spot yeah.
Speaker 2Oh yeah, it was Alberta. I was just thinking Calgary Airport.
Speaker 1Yes, yeah, yeah. So I don't live too far from Banff.
Speaker 2Okay, how did you fare with all the fires?
Speaker 1We got a little bit of smoke here. Like I live in Calgary, so we did get a bit of smoke, but unfortunately we're not as affected as obviously the people who live there are. Yeah, so that was pretty unfortunate.
Speaker 2Yeah, my husband's already asking if we can retire to Banff. Absolutely loved it. It was gorgeous. Yeah, I think I saw from your Reddit profile that August 2022, you started having some back issues.
Speaker 1Yeah, that was kind of the biggest flare up. If we wanted to go back a bit, I would say it was February 2021. I had a pretty bad episode. So I was working like the day before, my back was kind of sore, um, and I didn't think too much of it in the morning, I felt kind of fine. And then I was working pretty early in the morning as well, on, uh, in February of 2021.
Speaker 1And I lifted up a bag of grain and my legs just like gave out, just kind of hit the deck, um, which was pretty, pretty scary because I didn't really know what was going on and I kind of had to like crawl around and I was, yeah, it was really bad. And so, luckily, I got a hold of someone, a co-worker, and they came in to kind of relieve me and I had to get a drive home and, um, I was laid up for about like a week and a half to two weeks, um, but like recovered, pretty all right, like I went to physio, didn't have any like sciatica, nothing like that, like things seemed to kind of get better and I never, you know, went for mris or anything. And then, yeah, august of the following year is when it really got bad.
Speaker 2Was February, the first time you've ever experienced anything like that.
Speaker 1Yeah, like I've had like some muscle, like some back spasms. You know that would kind of go away in a day, but nothing, nothing like that. That was definitely a first time experience.
Speaker 2And was that the symptoms just in your back, or did they also go down your leg?
Speaker 1Yeah, just my back, and it was just. Yeah. You know, I could barely walk for a week and a half. Things were just stiff, but I had no experience of like any sciatica or pain in the glutes or anything like that at that point.
Speaker 2Okay, and so then things were fine until August of the following year.
Speaker 1Yeah. So I had actually applied to join the Calgary Fire Department and so I was training Disclaimer I wasn't training very smartly, I was going a little too hard. I was training with like a weighted vest on and doing hill sprints obviously a lot of stuff that puts compression on the lower back and I remember kind of just having this weird sensation in my glute and I didn't really think much of it. It wasn't painful, it was just kind of odd and I just figured it was kind of strained and I did kind of stop. I did stop training for a bit but then the pain like the, the sensation, turned to pain relatively quickly and it was clear something was wrong, because there was a lot of pain in the glute and then down the back of my thigh and it was at the point where, like you know, laying down and sitting was very uncomfortable. So that was August was definitely the start of the bigger problems that I experienced for about a year and a half.
Speaker 2I remember when my issue started, it did start with just a weird feeling in my glute and I said to my husband it feels like someone is just pinching my nerve between their finger. And it wasn't pain yet, it was just like a pinch. I kept trying to shift, you know, to relieve that pinch, but then it just moved to pain eventually. So then something led you to get a diagnosis.
Speaker 1Yeah. So I have a really great physiotherapist that I worked with and just like, went to her and talked about my symptoms and what occurred and I trusted her diagnosis and she said, yeah, it sounds like herniated discs. What occurred, and I trust, trusted her diagnosis and she said, yeah, it sounds like, you know, herniated discs, Unfortunately, like in Canada. Um, like, I could get an MRI but I'd have to go on a wait list. It would take about eight months. Uh, so at that point I wasn't really um looking at that option.
Speaker 1I just figured, you know, I'll just do some physiotherapy and take it easy, and things would start to get better. And they just kept getting worse until things started getting better.
Speaker 2Okay, but you did eventually end up with an MRI, correct?
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, I would say so. That happened in August and I think the following year at the end of winter. So I want to say, like March 2023, actually no sooner than that Probably like the beginning of winter in 2023 is when I paid up and got a private MRI.
Speaker 2And when did it show?
Speaker 1Yeah, three herniated discs L3, L4, l4, l5, l5s1. L5s1 being the most serious. I can't remember the exact sizes of them. I tried to actually find my report prior to this but I couldn't. But L5S1 was definitely showing. It was the biggest one. It was hitting the sciatic nerve.
Speaker 2Right and numbness pain.
Speaker 1Yeah. So lots of pain, lots of numbness. It went all the way down to my foot. Like my foot was tingly and like it felt like I was always like kind of like when I was walking it felt like there was like my sock was like bunched up underneath my foot.
Speaker 1It was like really weird sensation. I did have some muscular dystrophy in my calf so I lost like some muscle mass in my calf. And then as far as like sitting, like sitting was the most uncomfortable for the first bit, and then it turned to laying down, became the most uncomfortable and then it just I couldn't lay down. So I was actually for a couple of months I could only sleep sitting up in like one to two hour bursts. So I would essentially just sit on my couch, put on a movie I've seen a million times and hopefully fall asleep for a couple hours at a time.
Speaker 2And were you able to work at this point, or did you have to close business down? How did you handle that?
Speaker 1Yeah, no, I was working. So I was in a job like I was more in an operations management job, so I wasn't doing a lot of the actual labor involved with brewing and my bosses were very understanding. My one boss actually has very bad back problems as well, so he understood and just kind of I did light duties and had a standup desk and just kind of tried my best to get through it.
Speaker 2Yeah, no one understands your pain, unless they've herniated a disc.
Speaker 1Yeah, I think that's the toughest part is having a family, and my wife was trying to be supportive. But it gets to a point where she's just kind of like just get better already. It was at a point where she was like you should get surgery because this is getting ridiculous.
Speaker 2Did you have a doctor recommend surgery to you?
Speaker 1No, and I know in the States it's a lot different. Where I think surgery is. I don't want to say it's recommended more easily, but definitely doctors here aren't really great with back things, they're more like. Here's some medication. Surgery is generally something that will be recommended if you're losing bowel control and stuff like that. But if you're just in pain they just kind of say wait it out, go see a physiotherapist.
Speaker 2Okay, so then that's what you just did you went to physical therapy.
Speaker 1Yeah, I did physical therapy. I did acupuncture physical therapy, I did acupuncture massage. I did a whole bunch of stuff just to try to. I knew nothing was going to really fix me. I kind of accepted that time was going to be the best remedy. I was just trying to find relief and that also made lifestyle changes. I stopped drinking for a while, I changed up my diet, lost weight, so I was just kind of throwing everything at it.
Speaker 2I don't think people realize alcohol causes inflammation in the body.
Speaker 1So sometimes when you're in a pain, you want to turn to alcohol to soothe your pain, but you're causing more. Exactly so I just stopped drinking. I was drinking way more water just trying to hydrate more, but yeah, it was just. It just took a lot of time and waiting, in my case.
Speaker 2How long do you think you were doing physical therapy before you could say I'm feeling some improvement here?
Speaker 1time like so the injury happened august 2022. I don't think I was feeling like like I'm still not 100, like I still have some like nerve stuff in my calf, but as far as like mobility and like feeling comfortable, it took like I did. I started physical therapy in august and continued until like march of the following year and I was still. It just got to a point where I just felt like, you know, I could kind of do things on my own at home doing the exercises and just kind of going through the regime. My physical therapist does dry needling and I did find that that provided a lot of relief for like a short amount of time. So that was the biggest reason I kept going back to her.
Speaker 2Okay, and when did you decide you felt good enough to get back on the slopes?
Recovery and Adaptation After Back Injury
Speaker 1Yeah. So I mean kind of summer of um of last year is when I was, you know, I was able to start running again, started working out a bit. It took, it took over, like I would say, over a year and uh, as far as yeah, as far as going snowboarding, I kind of I maybe should have consulted with someone first, but the summer that I had I was, you know, riding my bike again. I just said, you know what, let's, let's go for this and see how it goes.
Speaker 2And no, it went well and are you still seeing your physical therapist now, or do you just do stuff at home?
Speaker 1I just do stuff at home, so I yeah it's just maintenance.
Speaker 1I just um, I try to keep my my back loose, Um, and then I also found like doing hip flexor exercises really helped with me as well. I know everybody's everybody's different, but like strengthening my hip flexors and and loosening my hip flexors has been very helpful in alleviating lower back tension. I have really tight hamstrings from being a cyclist, so trying to keep those loose definitely help out as well. So it's just daily maintenance that I'm just kind of trying to do at home. So, no, I haven't seen my therapist in probably a year.
Speaker 2Okay, I have talked to several moms on the podcast and you know it's a struggle when you're a mom and you can't pick up your kids, or or you know, just can't do. How old are your children?
Speaker 1yeah, so they uh, they're now six and four and I'm definitely you know the fun dad, so always wrestling with them and chasing around the house and and that was very difficult, um I think, I think that was probably the hardest part, that and like just kind of feeling isolated and alone, um, but not being able to be like a partner and a parent, especially for like the amount of time like I can go with sleep deprivation, I can go with like chronic pain, but having that part of my life kind of removed, was definitely the most challenging for me.
Speaker 2If the doctors had recommended surgery or were a little more free with surgery like the US, do you think you would have gone that route or are you happy with the progress you've made?
Speaker 1Yeah, I mean, I've read so many stories of people getting surgery and it maybe not working, or obviously there's been so many big success stories. I did do two cortisone injections, which I find didn't really do much. Again, you're never guaranteed to get relief from those things, so it was a very painful experience for me um that wasn't worth it in the end yeah, the second time was very uncomfortable it was very uncomfortable.
Speaker 1Yeah, the first time wasn't so bad. Second time I was like, yeah, I'm not gonna do this again did they do the x-ray guide it yeah, yeah, it was like a really good facility.
Speaker 1It's where I got my MRIs done and, yeah, I just don't know what happened there. Um, yeah, surgery I don't think I would have. I I'm pretty, I'm pretty stubborn and I'm very like regimented. So I was confident that I would kind of be able to get through it and I really stuck to routine. Um, you know, like I lost I think I lost like 25 pounds, stopped drinking, changed my diet and just like saw this as an opportunity to kind of like enrich my life and like not and try not to take mobility for granted and like start to really really take care of me. Like I'm in my late thirties, so it was kind of, you know, and I grew up doing some pretty high impact activities and continued to to do as well. So, yeah, I just saw it as an opportunity to like really kind of change my life and like turn it around a bit.
Speaker 2Do you have any goals of things that you haven't gotten back to yet, but you promise yourself you will?
Speaker 1Oh well, yeah, so I'm back snowboarding, but I want to get into like backcountry snowboarding, so split boarding, so essentially you self-propel yourself up a mountain and then snowboard down, so not using like chairlifts and stuff like that. That's something I've always wanted to do. I grew up on the East Coast where we didn't really have mountains, so I never really got that opportunity. But now I have a bunch of friends and other fathers that do that, so that's something I'm looking to kind of get into in the next few years.
Speaker 2And what about the firefighting? Did you pursue that? Or did you have to put that on the shelf.
Speaker 1Yeah. So I was kind of silly and even though it's a really long process and the injury happened during the process and I was very stubborn and kept through the process and I think the stress of the whole thing um added to what I was experiencing as well I was just, I put a lot of my like eggs in that basket that you know, this is what I was going to do, this is what it like. I was putting like my identity into it already and I had actually made it to the final stage despite my injury. I had to do, um, one physical test that involved wearing a weighted vest, and I did that with my injury and it didn't, didn't feel good. And then, um, the final test was a treadmill test, where it progressively gets faster and higher incline, and I hadn't been able to run ever. So I had zero training and I tried that, but I came up short.
Speaker 1And then, you know, I was pretty devastated. But after being able to kind of like let go of that experience and move on from it, that's when I started to kind of feel things get better. So it was, you know, leading up to that point I wasn't sleeping, I wasn't able to really lay down or rest and then literally that day when I failed the test, I came back home and I kind of accepted what happened. I was laying down in bed with my girls playing and I was like in a little bit of pain, but I was able to actually like sleep laying down for the first time in months. So I feel like the stress just like amplified everything for me as well.
Speaker 2Wow. So what do you think you would tell someone who is currently herniated a disc and feel like there's no?
Speaker 1I mean just, yeah, you got to just keep going one day after another. It's so hard to hear that because it feels like forever ago that I was in that position, but every day was like the long, like felt like the longest day of my life. And you just, yeah, it's so tough because, like I again, like I tried to read up on so many people's experiences and trying to get advice from others, but, like it's, it's kind of hard to take anything in, um, if that makes any sense. It's just like you're just kind of blinded by the whole experience. So, yeah, the advice is just like one day at a time it will get better.
Speaker 1Um, pretty much, you know, I would say majority of people do recover from it, whether they do it passively or do you have surgery, it does get better. And to just like take it as an opportunity to maybe take better care of yourself, drink more water, you know, if you're lifting weights, don't lift as much weight, or make sure you're lifting properly, or it's just, you know, I think I don't take my, my body for granted anymore and that's you know. Trying to take some positive out of the situation is also super, super helpful for me.
Speaker 2Now I found you your story on the I think the sciatica Reddit. Is that correct? Yeah, how do you find being a part of a community like that?
Speaker 1Super helpful. I mean, unfortunately, in subreddits like that, you know generally when someone gets better, they kind of leave, so the subreddit is just mostly negative or people's current experiences, which are not, you know, the greatest. They're on the greatest places or they're feeling a lot of pain, uh. So you gotta remember people have to remember that that there's not a ton of success stories out there. I kind of made it. You know I'm not on it super actively, but I try to check in once in a while and I still get people messaging me in my inbox and asking for advice and stuff like that. I think it's super helpful to be able to share stories and read other people's stories, cause that's also a really difficult thing. It's like how alone you feel, like you're, if your friend, like your friends, won't understand what you're going through, your spouse or your family. So to have a community of people that do know what you're going through is is definitely sort of helpful Yep?
Speaker 2Absolutely, so tell me about the brewery you work. You work for or do you?
Brewing Success and Inspiring Recovery
Speaker 1own it. I'm sorry, no, oh no, I'm too smart to own my own brewery. Yeah, no, I work for. It's a little brewery in Calgary called Cabin Brewing. It's an awesome place, love it there. I have a nice four-day work week, which is awesome. And yeah, no, it's brewing is brewing. I kind of accidentally got into it.
Speaker 1I was uh in the service industry and worked at a brewery and I said oh I kind of want to make beer and yeah looks fun and just kind of started at the bottom work my way up and yeah, eight years later still doing it you're doing ipas or ales or yeah, a little bit of everything. I mean I'm all IPA'd out. I like my light lagers and Pilsners more you ask most brewers that have been doing it for more than five years that's all they want to drink now are lagers and Pilsners experience.
Speaker 2I know people that are in the dark, deep, depressing feelings of herniated disc just really need these positive stories. So thank you again.
Speaker 1Yeah, yeah, happy to share.
Speaker 2Thank you, and if you are a listener and you have a positive story of recovery from a serious back or neck injury, head over to bedbackbeyondcom and click share your story. I would love to include your journey. Once again, eric, thank you so much. It was a pleasure meeting you.
Speaker 1Yeah, you as well, thank you.