John Knopick: So for almost two months now, I've been asking what the hell has happened to me after July eleventh. Was it anxiety? Was it trauma? Was it depression? Was it medication? Was I just paying too much attention to every feeling in my body, being overly hyperly aware of things? I couldn't figure it out. I'm an architect, I'm a technician, I'm I'm an engineer. I have to know reasons behind things. I have to r know why things are the way they are. And for the longest time, this was a major unknown of mine. All I knew was July eleventh, I had a tattoo done. And then the next day, my world changed. And I've had many tattoos done. I had like thirteen, I think, now. So I was n didn't think anything of this. And I had they were doing a tattoo and this one required me to be on my stomach. And normally most tattoo shops will have like a f a hole in their in their tattoo or in their bed that you would lay in. So kind of like when you get a massage done, you could bury your face down into the hole and then you'd be laying flat on your stomach and they do the work they need to do depending on where you want your tattoo done. He didn't have that in his shop. He just had a flat bed. So I had to lay there on my stomach with my neck, my neck cranked back in a very awkward angle for two plus hours. I also have my arm bent back in a r in a weird position as well because of where they were putting the tattoo on my arm. I didn't think anything of it at the time. I, you know, we took some breaks, I shook my nug out, and I was thinking, okay, I'm gonna have some stiffness, some pain, I'm gonna have to work through it, and then everything would be fine, like always. Little did I realize that the next day I would be thrust right into one of those videos you see from island nations that are getting blasted by a tsunami. Right after earthquake or something happens, because it literally felt that way internally to me. I was just sitting there on the couch in the afternoon the next day, and all of a sudden I this wave, I just saw this wave on the horizon, it kept getting bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And then until it blasted me and blasted everything in my entire mental brain was gone and replaced with anxiety, fear, panic, catastrophic thoughts, doom and gloom. Nothing I could think about, I could focus on because my brain obliterated it. If I tried to focus on anything positive coming up the next day or down the road, my brain obliterated it. It's like you're in you're in we're in full on panic mode here and nothing else matters. I was so scared to fall asleep at night, to close my eyes at night, to the point where my brain psychosomatically created pain in my foot that forced me to sleep in the recliner in our bedroom. Because it didn't want me to go to sleep. Both my mom and my uncle passed away unexpectedly due to heart issues, although they knew they were having problems, they didn't get them addressed. But it it freaked me out. So I was trying to figure out what was going on with me. I was having heart racing issues. I was having all of these different what I felt were unnatural occurrences to me, things I had never felt in my entire life. And they were happening frequently, and they were happening fast and furious, and they were happening. On a very large scale. So I had to get things figured out. So I went through a full cardiac workup. Everything came back solid. That was one relief. But it didn't stop the depression, the doom and gloom, the anxiety, didn't stop any of that from happening. So then I thought, okay, what's the next possible causation of this? Never dawned on me that growing up, I've always had issues where if I'm driving for an extended period of time or if I'm walking long distances. I start to get like a white hot pain in the back of my neck on the top of the top of my spine. And never thought of what that could be a potential issue. So I started trying to put two and two together, and I'm like, well, when did all of this start? And it was the day after I did my tattoo. What was different about that day? Well, look how my neck was for two hours, two plus hours. Didn't think about that at the time. So I decided to go see a neurologist and a car a neck specialist. And He ran me through tests. He did some like strength tests and things like that. And he's like, Well, everything seems okay on the surface here, but I want to take a deeper look. So I wanna get a I wanna get a bone scan on your neck to see how your spine's doing. And he did. and then I also at the same time was having some stomach digestion issues because I had surgery a year ago. So they did a CT scan on my stomach and they found like a like looks like a war like on a piece of wood, they had like a little warped spot kind of a thing. And they found that on my pelvis bone. And they wanted to do an MRI on that. So I had that scheduled. But then my next specialist came back with, Well, I want you to I told him I want to have an MRI done because he said the spine itself, the bones, everything looked fine from that perspective. And I'm like, Well, I wanna have I wanna have an MRI done. I want to have the nerves look dice 'cause I think I probably Maybe either exacerbated an existing issue or maybe I caused some nerve irritation or damage. And I want to have it looked at. And he's like, Well, you're gonna have to go through some PT first and then you can have it done. But then in the time it was between that, I started having more severe, more frequent neck-related issues. So I pointed that out and sent it over to his to his staff. And then like, okay, well, we're gonna forego the PT for now and go ahead and get the MRI done. So I pushed. my pelvis exam to next month and I had my MRI done on my cervical spine and neck last Wednesday. And every day thereafter I was just sitting checking my health over and over and over again, anxiously awaiting to see if there was a potential cause behind what I've been dealing with the last couple months. And the results came in yesterday. And actually I'm just sitting here right now in this position. I'm already starting to feel the the pain in the back of my neck. So In looking at that, the scans came back yesterday, and I was proven right. I got to take my victory lap. My C5 and C6 discs are pushing against my spinal cord, kind of flattening it a little bit. There's still fluid in there, so everything is still okay. It's not fully damaged or anything like that, but it is causing strain on it. And They also noticed that I have a narrow spinal canal, which again, it's something that you're either born with or it's like a degenerator degenerative type of thing, something that I was never aware of. And from my understanding, I don't know if any of my other family members ever had that. So yeah, it's a multiple multiple things were found. And that kind of vindicated me and provided me some much needed relief. Now, not to say, you know, that the tattoo caused the the discs to do that. Most likely it didn't. It's very possible and most likely, more likely scenario that my neck was already messed up from wearing chair degeneration, whatever the case was, and this tattoo just exacerbated it and pushed it over the edge, which is exactly what I was saying the entire time. But everybody, other people I had talked to, some people I talked to said it was all in my head. And that, you're gonna get that scan and it's gonna come back normal. And then what? And I was worried about that. But when I got that scan and the proof came in, yeah, my world has changed in the last 24 hours. I have I now have an appointment scheduled Monday with my neurologist and a neurosurgeon actually to go through our next course where it could be something as simple as possible therapy. Injections, which I absolutely do not want and will not get done. I do not want cortisone injections because I know those are just a band-aid, not a cure-all, and I need this fixed. Or they might be going down the route of having my having an artificial disc put in or having something having those removed or something. Something at this point, any all the options are on the table. This is something I've never been through in my life, obviously. But I'm really glad to know that I finally have another piece of the puzzle, even though I still don't know what the whole picture is. It's a massive relief that I have those answers now. And that I can continue to move forward. Because living in that fear of the unknown, living in that fear of the uncertain. Is almost as bad as the crippling anxiety itself. It's almost as bad as going through all that depression and doom and gloom and stuff because you're not in control. You don't know the path. You don't know, you don't know how you got put in this room. You just know you're in it and you don't know how to get out of it. So by giving me the scan and giving me these results, I at least have a window. I at least have a potential way out. That gives me hope. That at least shows me a little bit of a flashlight in the darkness, some a path for me to follow. Not to say it's going to take completely get me out of it because you know other things other things will always come up. But at least in this instance, with this massive of a situation, to have that option available, to have that potential solution. Is massive. And for weeks I've been asking what's wrong with my brain. Maybe that's the wrong question. Maybe it's not my brain. Maybe the better question should be, what's happening to my whole system? I don't know yet. But now I've got another piece of the puzzle. And for once, I'm not going to force it to be the whole answer. This is the honest middle. I'm John Kanopic, and we'll keep figuring it out together. See you next time.