Battling sciatica pain - 5 months later

This past July I went to my soccer game, played hard, and then went home and fell asleep.  I woke up the next morning, walked to work, sat at my desk, and like most mornings I started working with my development team in India.  An hour or so later I stood up and could barely walk.  Pain starting in my left buttock was shooting down my leg.  My first reaction was that I must have pulled a muscle in my soccer game the night before and it just took a little while to feel it.  Basically, I thought I pulled my butt muscle. I rested a few days and the pain subsided some, but strangely I began to notice that it would come and go.  That sure didn't sound like a muscle pull, huh?  A trip to the doctor confirmed I was suffering from sciatica.  Sciatica is actually not a diagnosis, but a symptom.  In my case, I'd have to guess it's from a back injury I suffered while skiing last February. Essentially the sciatic nerve runs down your leg starting from the bottom of your spine and mine was getting pinched.  A severe case can cause sharp pain/numbness all the way down your leg.  In my case, it's mostly mild discomfort (such as when I sit here typing this).

Well, fast forward 5 months and I'm still more or less in the same spot.  I've missed two seasons of soccer, played 1.5 seasons of softball without being able to run past first base (I thought my team was going to kill me after 3 months of taking a pinch runner each at bat), got a super embarrassing standing desk at work, and ran a 1:38 half marathon.  Wait, did I just say a half marathon?  Yup, for some reason standing and jogging make my leg feel good, but hills, sprinting, and sitting in a chair/car start to cause issues.  I'm crossing my fingers that I'll be able to ski this winter pain free, but I think the thing that scares me the most is not actually skiing but sitting in a car or plane (yeah Colorado trip coming up!) getting to the mountain.  To the right is my most recent Amazon purchase to hopefully help that problem.  Yes, I'm 29 years old going on 89.  Come on single ladies, who wouldn't want to date a guy that owns a seat wedge?

So far I've spent a fair amount of time (and a LOT of money) visiting two different chiropractors and a physical therapist.  I've done lots of stretching, some yoga and tried two weeks of no exercise.  Nothing seems to work.  Next week I go to a back/spine specialist and will likely get my first ever MRI.  Other options could include more yoga, acupuncture, cortisone shots, or even surgery.

So what have I learned from all of this?  First, how important my health is to me.  I know I must not be the only one that doesn't appreciate my health until I'm no longer healthy (and I keep doing this over and over and over again).  I know it's affected my mood, especially at work where I'm in the most discomfort.  Second, how important being active and playing sports is to me.  Just the thought of getting worse and having to stop the ~20+ miles a week I run and the many days of skiing I hope to do soon makes me shudder.  Third, how completely messed up our health care system is in this country.  I have a comparatively minor health issue, have a supposedly high quality health insurance plan, and live in a city with some of the world's best hospital's and doctors.  And yet I've been shocked at how wasteful, inefficient, and expensive my experience seeking treatment has been.  I can only imagine what it's like for others in this country.  It's also really peaked my interest in the health care industry and how much  technology can disrupt the status quo (more to come on this soon).

An interview with a casino CEO

"There are three ways to get fired from a casino:  theft, sexual harassment, and running an experiment without a control group" says Gary Loveman, the CEO of Ceasars. Gary used to work for the Fed Reserve and as an economics professor at Harvard Business School, yet today runs one of the largest casino companies in the country. At the heart of the discussion is what casinos do to entice new customers to increase business and also how do they retain those customers.  As a business, they are constantly analyzing data on customer usage and demographics and conducting experiments to see what works and what doesn't.  They are thus able to know what customers to offer free dinner, VIP night club passes, or hotel rooms to.  As an example, customers using their "loyalty cards" in the casino give real time data that the casino is able to use to adjust the customer experience on the fly.  On average, casinos pay out 90% of what is earned.  If a customer earns more than that, the casino loses money.  If a customer earns less, they get annoyed and don't want to come back.  So, if a customer is at the casino and is losing money on a slot, Caesars is able to recognize this, notify someone on the floor, and have an employee go up and offer that customer something to improve their experience (free dinner?) and increase the chance of them coming back.

I'm not a big fan of casinos or gambling in general, but I must say I'm quite impressed at how this data is being used.  It's also a little scary when you start pondering how much data companies have on everyone today, and the ways the smart ones can start taking advantage of it.  Big money is on the line for those companies that do this well.

Listen here (starts about 2 minutes in and runs for 20 minutes or so)

Eye-opening US Unemployment Graphs

Here are some really interesting charts showing the breakdown of unemployment, courtesy of Planet Money.  Those with a college degree have unemployment of <5%.  Those without a high school degree are around 15%.  Those age 20-24 are at 15% unemployment, everyone older is about half that.

Check out the full list of charts here

Cold, hard realities

"Without the distortion of a credit bubble, it is clear that far too many Americans don't know how to do anything that the world is willing to pay them a living wage for.  No economic theory offers them easy salvation." Adam Davidson, the creator of one of my favorite podcasts, NPR's Planet Money, is pretty blunt in his assessment of the US economy and I couldn't agree more.  Read the full article here: NY times link.  If you haven't checked out Planet Money, you should do so.  They consistently have stories about things that impact your day-to-day life that you've either never thought about or have no idea how/why they work as they do.  http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/

Lazy Man's Summary of Adam's article:  No politician is able to create jobs even though they all insist that they can.  "Business-friendly" states such as Texas steal jobs from other states but create very few net jobs for the country.  Subsidizing green industries does nothing other than shift jobs from one industry (oil) to another (such as solar).  Stimulus funds do little unless they are enormously huge (and then they still need to be paid for).  Cutting taxes and regulations may or may not have a long term benefit, but in the short term they simply result in laying off many government workers and not growing the economy (ask Britain).  The best solution:  those without jobs need to learn new skills and move to where the jobs are in the country (Dakotas, Nebraska, Wyoming).