Editor’s Note: We are always on the lookout for chronic pain patients who have an interesting story. When I read this piece on Tom Riggs, a chronic pain patient from Fort Collins, Colorado, who has figured out a way to battle his chronic pain through exercise, we thought he might be an interesting story.
Tom Riggs is a runner, artist and writer living in Fort Collins
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He has run over 30,000 miles, competed in 30 marathons and three times ran in the fabled Boston Marathon.
But in recent years, his body simply broke down.
He has had four spinal surgeries and three foot surgeries in the last six years. He lives in chronic pain.
And yet he kept running – eight to ten miles a day.
“My body was suffering, but I’ve always had issues with pain and just thought that’s the way life is so I kept running.”
Tom is not going to tell you that running is a cure all – although he thinks it might be close.
In order to keep going with his severe chronic pain, he has a regimen of pain medications that he takes – Cymbalta treats anxiety and fibromyalgia – Nucynta ER which is a narcotic pain medication – a muscle relaxer, hydrocodone and sleep medication that he takes on as needed basis.
Those are his medications, but he’ll tell you the most important drug he takes is exercise.
His doctors agree.
When he started seeing a pain specialist a couple of years ago, they told him to stay active.
So he did – and continued to run.
But it hurt even more.
He made a promise to his wife of 32 years, if they tell me to stop running, I will.
The pounding the body takes with each footfall, generating as much as three-to-four times the body’s weight, can take a toll on a very healthy body, let alone one with screws and rods and wires holding things together
In late 2013, the doctors finally said, “Enough – the running is doing more damage to your body than it helps.”
Tom thinks chronic pain may run in his family. His mother used to say “I hurt,” but it never slowed her down. She was diagnosed with cancer in her 40’s – and probably suffered from breakthrough cancer pain. It went into remission but claimed her life twenty years later.
Like his mother, Tom tries to fight through the pain.
For him, a former high school gymnast turned runner, exercise has always been the way.
So as his doctors told him, you have to stop running, he looked for an alternative.
“I knew I felt better when I was active, so I looked for alternatives.”
Source Nationalpainreport.com
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