Magic Tape (Life After The Army)

I’ve been heading to the local YMCA and working out with my wife pretty consistently after work every day that we can. For the most part I do a lot of walking around the rack and using light weights on the universal machines with a lot of reps. I’ve been feeling good physically, but of course the pain is always a constant. As I mentioned earlier, I’ve been taking a lot of Vicodin to compensate.

My wife has been using something called KT Tape to help with foot pain after hearing about it from a co-worker and it’s helped her out quite a bit. For those of you (like me) who had never heard of KT Tape, it’s “a lightweight, comfortable to wear, and can be used for hundreds of common injuries such as lower back pain, knee pain, shin splints, carpal tunnel syndrome and tennis elbow, just to name a few…according to the KT Tape website (http://www.kttape.com/what-is-kt-tape/)

My wife suggested that I try it on my neck to see if it helps…and so I could try and play a little basketball. Yesterday she applied it to my neck as shown on their website (http://www.kttape.com/instructions/neck-and-shoulder/) and then we headed off to the YMCA. I did my normal walking and then instead of any weights, I went down to the gym and just shot around. I have to say it felt good just shooting jump shots and layups. I haven’t touched a basketball in so long, and it used to be such a huge part of my life. I was feeling good, making shots and working up a sweat.

Unfortunately I could tell by the time we got home that something was wrong. I could feel the pain in my neck and shoulders start to come on in earnest. I had my wife rub on some cannabis cream I had, which usually does a decent job of helping out with the pain. I then took muscle relaxers and went to bed. I had a horrible night’s sleep because of the pain. I ended up getting up and taking some Vicodin…then later on I got up and grabbed an ice pack for the back of my neck. I’m not sure how much I slept, but it didn’t seem like much.

Now I’m up and moving about the day after and still in a lot of pain. I took more Vicodin and will probably end up taking it all day long because I’m in so much pain. It really sucks because I had put a lot of hope into this tape and thought for a bit that I might be able to at least shoot around off and on, but now I know that basketball…even just shooting around is something I just can’t do anymore. I know the tape works for somethings, but just not for my neck injury. Click here if you're interested in buying some to try out yourself.

It just really sucks that something I loved, something that was such a big part of my life has been taken away from me. The closest I can get is watching my kiddos play or watching basketball on TV.