Healing Back Pain - The Mind-Body Prescription - Review - (5/5 stars)

I wrote this review several years ago but didn’t have a website at the time so I wanted to share again on here since this continues to be something near and dear to me. I have added a couple lines here or there, but this is mainly the original review I wrote after reading the book.

CHANGED MY LIFE! I have written this on so many sites now since reading this incredible book. In short, I was a long time sufferer of low back pain. Pain ran down the leg and all over the core area in excruciating fashion. I had minor back surgery at age 19 due to a herniated disc. All my love of sports and competing was ruined. This led me to be angry most of the time and even when I wasn’t, I was in so much pain that I just wished I wasn’t alive anymore. Besides surgery, I had done physical therapy, hundreds of decompression sessions at $75 a pop, used a Tens-unit, dozens of epidural injections, massages, trainers, acupuncture from several different specialists, pain management doctors, creams, and more opiate pills (Morphine, Oxycodone, etc.) than any person in life should ever take... I had done it all.

I was used to being in pain and feeling decent enough to live my life that way until I had major setback once again. This time made the last time look like a small bruise compared to the horror I was about to go through, but it was the best thing that ever happened in my life besides the birth of my two children. I saw four neurosurgeons in NC because I knew Duke and UNC had amazing doctors. The last one I saw said I needed emergency surgery YESTERDAY. He said I may never be able to go to the bathroom on my own again and could lose full feeling/function to my legs due to the bad case of foot-drop I had from the explosion in my back. After weeks of appointments and more pills, therapy, etc., I decided to have surgery. If I was lucky, it would be a double laminectomy this time, but only if I was lucky. Three of the four surgeons said I needed a fusion with rods installed. One day when I was out of pain meds, I had a refill sent in to the pharmacy but I was in so much pain that I couldn’t even make it to my truck in order to pick them up. Feeling completely empty and lost, I remembered buying the book “Healing Back Pain” by Dr. Sarno. I actually purchased it two times after hearing about it on a talk show that I listened to and both times I tossed it in the corner and forgot about it, but this time I had no choice.

I read the first 90 pages within a couple hours and I knew this was special. (The concept is a bit difficult to just toss out on a review, but in short, the pain you feel IS REAL pain, however, it’s not really hurting you. You are causing it yourself through your subconscious mind. It’s almost like signals that we are giving ourselves but we are trained to ignore the real reason for these pain signals and it’s like throwing gallons of fuel on the fire when you go see a doctor or look at an x-ray or MRI because then you truly believe it’s an injury that needs to be fixed properly by a surgeon, etc. Dr. Sarno gives many examples in this book, but one thing that really made it click for me is that the femur bone, aka the largest bone in the human body, takes about 6-8 weeks to fully heal from a break, yet people get whiplash and complain ten years later that they are still in pain from it.) Anyway, I called my dad immediately and told him about the book because he also had been a sufferer of chronic back pain his whole life. I was so excited. I couldn’t contain the tears. I finished the 225 page book in 24 hours.

My pain was gone already. Well, at least 75% of the pain was gone. Good enough that I cancelled my scheduled surgery. I couldn’t have cared less if other people thought I was nuts. All I knew was TMS was for real in my eyes and Dr. Sarno is a genius. As I went from 75% pain-free to 80%, then 90%, and so on and so forth, I had moments happen where I was throbbing in pain again. But once I learned that it was happening because the pain signals, or “TMS” as Dr. Sarno calls it, were purposely attacking me. He says that it’s like a child throwing a temper tantrum. This is why the pain attacks when you are trying to do something. It’s a child that wants it’s way, and if it doesn’t get it’s way, it flips out. The same pain that would make it so I couldn’t sit in my truck, the same pain that made me highly addicted to opiates (which I will share a great story about overcoming that later), the same pain that made me wonder if I should have surgery or jump off a building, was all bullshit. My best example of pain being a temper tantrum for me was when I was just a few weeks post reading this book and starting to feel like a normal man again, when I was driving to the gym to workout and pain rushed down my leg so bad that I yanked my truck over to the curb, opened my door and stuck my leg out, screaming in pain. At this point I thought about the teachings in this book and knew it was my subconscious screwing with me. It was throwing a temper tantrum because I was fighting back and heading to the gym when it wanted me to lay down, pop pills, whine and cry about the “injury” - so I literally told the pain to “burn in hell” and loudly, as I closed my door and drove to the gym. I proceeded to have an hour long high intensity workout including burpees, squats, running, push-ups, etc. And I felt amazing. Three months after I read the book, I ran a half marathon.

I emailed Dr. Sarno and found out he retired a year prior at 90-years-old and I wouldn’t be able to reach him. The next day I received a call from Dr. Sarno. I had star shock like never before. I called him back and we talked for 30 minutes. I cried like a baby thanking him and asked him what I could do to repay him for giving me my life back. All he said was to spread the information. What an amazing man…

Some day the world will be talking about how Dr. Sarno was WAY ahead of his time. And the fact that he took the time to call me and answer all my questions just because I wrote him an email shows how caring he is.

Thank you Dr. Sarno.

*** Since I wrote this review, Dr. Sarno has passed. But I will continue to spread the word and try my best to at least offer this information to others who suffer from chronic pain. I found the audio book for free on youtube recently, but it had been removed shortly after. The book is $7 on Amazon and the audio version is $8 on audible. If anyone is in chronic pain and can not afford a copy, please message me from my contact page and I will send you a copy of the book free of charge.

*** Update 8/28/19 - It was brought to my attention from a reader that they weren’t sure if I had surgery or not. I had the one minor surgery at the age of 19, but after that I had cancelled any surgeries lined up. And in case I wasn’t clear before, my “injury” and diagnosis for the back issues in my late 20’s, and early-to-mid 30’s, was MUCH worse than the herniated disc I had at 19. There are no words to describe the amount of pain at that point. When I was 19, it was a clear discomfort, but not the screaming, crying, wish you were dead kind of pain that I had later in life. Sorry for any confusion.

Please feel free to email me or leave a comment if you’d like to know more about my story or how this can help you. This was a very short summary of what I went through. My goal is to help as many others with chronic pain and/or illness as I can in order to show my sincere gratitude to Dr. Sarno.

Under Currents - Review (2.5/5 stars)

Landscaping 101 - Predictable - Evil Men

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This review is more of a likes/dislikes about the book.

This was my first book by Nora Roberts. As a romantic suspense writer myself, I decided to check out a Nora Roberts book after reading so many positive things about her writing. And my review is of course only for the title here, so this is in no way reviewing Ms. Roberts as a whole, but all I know is this book. Also, I will skip the summary of what happens as there are plenty of those out there and I’m assuming you’ve read the book if you’re reading this. This review is based on the audio book.

Under Currents has three parts to it. The first part was strong and even though there were areas I questioned in the book, I would give part one 4.5 out of 5 stars. Part two and three were at most 2 stars a piece.

Things I liked:
- The story moved. I found myself wanting to know what happens next whenever I stopped listening to the book.
- The narrator is talented and does a decent job differentiating herself between characters.
- I rooted for the main characters, Zane, Britt (his sister) and Darby (love interest) for most of the book.
- I learned a lot about landscaping.
- There were parts of the story that I got excited to see unfold.
- Although I didn’t cry at all, I was on the edge of my seat several times.
- Nora paints a great picture with description of the scenery.

Things I didn't like:
- Predictability... I continuously called out in my mind what was going to happen. As soon as part one came to a close, the rest of the book was easy to figure out. Especially the ending. It was clear as day that Darby and Zane would wind up together the second Darby entered the story. It dragged on way to long. I wanted Graham (Zane’s father) to show back up since his jail term was over when part two ended yet we had to go on and on about Darby and landscaping and then the bad flirting between her and Zane before what we all knew would happen finally did and they hooked up. I found myself wanting to skip a few chapters in hopes that the landscaping and pre-flirting before the real flirting, before the actual “we like each other” moments would be over and the story would be back on. Also, I knew that Trent (Darby’s ex-husband) was going to be the villain as soon as Graham got locked up the second time. There was something like 6 hours remaining out of the 15 hour audio book and it was clear as day that Trent would come back into the picture. It made the ending annoying because you knew exactly who the bad guy was that the author attempted to keep a surprise. It wasn't. At all.

- To piggyback on the last part, I can't for the life of me understand why Nora didn't keep Zane's parents, or at least his father, Graham, as a suspect and keep him involved. This book would have been so much better if either it stopped shorty after Graham went back to prison, or if he escaped, got out early, something, anything involving him being a big part still rather than bringing in pretty much the exact same character to be the bad guy at the end. There should have been at least 50 more pages with Graham in the book. I felt like I waited through all the annoying landscaping/Darby stuff, eagerly waiting for Graham to return, then he does for like ten pages and he’s out of the picture with 5 hours of the audio book remaining. This was when I completed the book in my head and wrote down exactly what I expected will happen the rest of the way and I was 100% accurate.

- Another piggyback; Trent and Graham were literally the same exact person. They said the same evil things, word for word about their women being "cu*ts" and “sl*ts” etc. They both beat their wives, went to jail, got out and came after the one's that wronged them. The same personality, the same actions, words spoken, even the same attempted murders.

- OK, looks like all of these will be piggybacks... The portrayal of men in this book is a tad outrageous. I understand there are creeps and ass holes in the world, but the author (Nora Roberts of course) had four men in this books all be horrible men. Graham, Trent, Clint Draper, Clint Draper's father (there were a couple others but they had very small parts). All of them ran in the same-ish circle and all beat their wives, were complete abusive jerks to their children, treated women like animals and either were murderers or tried to murder people. Just the one would have sufficed. MAYBE have another one as a twist, but come on... I kept wondering is Nora truly believes most men are abusive horrible people who don't mind throwing away everything they have in order to murder or beat women.

- A few small nitpicky things I was annoyed with:
(1) There must have been 100 references to coke/Coca-Cola and nothing but insanely unhealthy snacks and food being consumed. The main characters (Darby and Zane) were described as muscular, fit, and healthy, yet their diet choices throughout the entire book were coke, cupcakes, pizza, sweet tea, and pasta.
(2) The deep southern accents. I live in the city this book was featured in and I'd say maybe 5% of the people you meet have a southern accent. In this book's audio version, every single person sounds like they're from Alabama in the 1960's.
(3) Zane carried an authentic sized baseball in his pants pocket through most of part three. He carries it in meetings, events, dinners, etc. It's how he stops the villain, Trent, at the end, by throwing it at him. I feel like Nora spent the whole 3rd part of the book planting this baseball in Zane's possession just so she could end it with him throwing the ball at Trent's face to stop him from killing Darby. Only problem with that is, there's no way a baseball fits in jeans or dress pants without being incredible uncomfortable and noticeable. He would have to only be wearing cargo shorts in order to carry a baseball around like that.
(4) All of the male voices (this is just for the audio version) sounded the same. They all sounded angry, slow, and old. Even when the male character was supposed to be happy, he would sound pissed and short with his angry response to whomever was talking to him. Even during romantic moments. I kept wondering why the men were so mad. I do believe the narrator was very talented and did the best she could for playing the voice of every character, but it was hard to get used to.
(5) Part two and most of part three are saturated with landscaping information. I kept thinking the landscaping was going to have a huge thing to do with how the book ended but it doesn’t. It’s just what Darby does for a living. The audio book was 15 hours long. If the landscaping talk was cut in half, the book would have been 12 hours long and nothing would have been missed.
(6) I know this isn’t going to be a popular opinion from other reviews I’ve read, but I found Darby annoying for most of her parts in the book. I wanted good things for her and rooted for her as a person, but between the landscaping obsession, her calling herself “hot” many times, and her “I don’t need your help” attitude toward Zane when he was just trying to be protective of her, I found it hard to really like her. She was very nosey, bossy, arrogant, and wouldn’t stop talking.
(7) There were some scenes that were so intense for no reason. The little kids baseball game did nothing for the story but prove it was a small town kind of place, however, one of the innings in the baseball game was treated like the last play in the world series. I kept thinking something huge was about to happen, but then the kid hit a pop-up fly and it was caught and the inning ended. It meant nothing at all except, they like baseball…
(8) The sex scenes are very bland, which is fine if you don’t want that stuff in your book, I can dig it, but it was also unbelievable. Zane was so angry sounding whenever he said anything. He would do creepy things like say “mmmmmmm yes” and sound so pissed and aggressive when he was trying to be sexy about Darby taking her clothes off. This isn’t Nora as much as the readers’ voice/tone, so I’ll give her a slight pass there since I didn’t read the book myself and for all I know it came across less creepy that way. However, her description of these romantic scenes were quite odd. I can’t imagine it’s too common for a woman to say she has “ninja skills” and call herself “hot” while the man grunts and sounds like he wants to kill the woman getting naked next to him.
(9) Graham uses his wife’s iPad in a hotel many times when he’s coming after Zane and Darby. If he did that, the cops would have found him minutes after he connected to the internet.
(10) I don’t know if Nora does this in all her books, so if she does, then I’ll take this back, but I didn’t see a reason for the quotes dropped at the start of many of the chapters. They weren’t very good ones and didn’t seem to match the book or help it along whatsoever.
(11) The portrayal of men, ie: evil monsters, was a little much. If one of these horrible murderer men was changed to a crazy female it would have been more believable. Not because it needed a crazy female, but because all the guys were the same psychotic person, like there was something in the water but only men drank it. They had the same dirty mouths, physical abuse and loved killing people to get back at them.
(12) Clint Draper masturbating on the welcome mat was overkill. Not to mention the guy was blackout drunk so it would have taken him quite a while to “get there”. It just didn’t seem needed. Spit or urine would have sufficed to gross out the reader.
(13) This one was just lazy. Darby is a heavy sleeper, that’s fine, but she slept through multiple gun shots in the room she was sleeping in, shattering the glass windows and doors IN THAT ROOM and Zane says she slept through it. Not buying that.
(14) “The twins” as I call them, Trent and Graham, both say several times “you stole my life and I want it back”. After reading reviews that say Nora rights several books a year, I am beginning to understand some of these parts that appear lazy. It would have been very easy for her to at the very least have one of them have a different line to say when he’s attacking the hero.
(15) Zane throws a baseball and doesn’t do anything else to Trent when he’s trying to kill Darby. I would think he would tie him up or continue beating him in that moment. Not just hoping the baseball was enough. I just can’t get over picturing Zane trying to squeeze a whole baseball out of his jeans pocket so he can use it as a weapon. “Hold, on, just a minute! Stay right there. Almost got it!”
(16) Zane and Darby start planning their wedding the same day of the big ending where Darby almost dies and Zane beats up Trent. Just a few short hours after a moment that would take most people weeks to relax from and they’re sitting next to each other picking wedding dates and location. Come on now…


Some mistakes I jotted down:
(a) Micah says “Britt is just like my sister Chloe except she’s straight, has kids and is married” – However, he just mentioned earlier that his sister Chloe is in fact married…
(b) When Emily has Britt in her car after escaping from the hospital with her, she calls Dave and says “I have Emily” – but it’s Emily talking. She was supposed to say “I have Britt”. That may have been an error on the narrator, but I don’t know.
(c) Early in the book when Zane goes to a school dance, he is talking with his date afterward and she comments about how she can’t believe he doesn’t have a cell phone because everyone does and she wouldn’t know what to do without hers. Well, it’s in the 1990’s at that point, and I was their age in the 1990’s and no one had cell phones yet. If you were lucky or your family had money, maybe you had a pager. I think one guy in my entire high school had a cell phone in 1999 and he was rich.
(d) There’s references in part one to the kids playing with a Gameboy. Those were not a thing in the late 90’s at all. And they certainly weren’t around the same time cell phones became a regular thing.

For the life of me I can’t understand why so many people gave this a high rating. I am going to read some of her earlier work, but when I discussed Under Currents with readers of Nora’s other work, they felt she followed a formula for this one and seemed to mail it in. That being said, it’s not a bad book, I mean, I wanted to finish it and did in 3 days, so it kept my interest, but I expected much more from such a popular author. The predictability just came across amateurish in my opinion. But the worst part to me was the villains all having the same exact characteristics. I have read other reviews that tend to really like Darby’s personality, so I could be wrong there, but to me she was obnoxious. Maybe because as a reader I’m trying to fall in love with her like Zane is and she just isn’t my type.

I do want to thanks Nora Roberts though because after reading this and seeing the reviews, I am very confident that I will be a best-selling author! That’s my review. Happy landscaping everyone!

Water for Elephants - Review (4.5/5 stars)

This book is great! It starts with a young man in the 1920's who is on the verge of graduating from an ivy league graduate school and he loses his parents which results in him losing everything but the clothes on his back. He runs away and finds himself on a train which winds up being a circus train. Jacob (the young man) was going to school to be a veterinarian and this circus group winds up deciding he may be able to benefit them being that he is smart with animals.

He goes through so many funny/strange encounters with different people and animals. You can imagine the people on the circus too: from a 600 lb fat women, to midgets, to monkeys, to elephants. Even though I have not seen the movie, the fact that it is rated PG13 and not R tells me right away that you are much better off reading the book first, as I am sure they are going to have to leave out some of the good stuff.

Anyway, Jacob meets some friends who wind up being there for him through hard times and he does the same for them. The elephant in this book is amazing, I could actually picture this exact animal and I even laughed a few times picturing what she was doing. One of the best parts about the book is that the story is actually being told by Jacob at the age of 91...or 93, not quite sure. So it kind of flips back and forth from him being a 23 year old, then he is in the 2000's as the old man in a nursing home which makes you very sad for him as he is losing his mind and control of certain things, which we will all go through one day and you find yourself really feeling for this man. And maybe it will even make you want to call your grandparents and just chat with them for a bit.

Anyway, Jacob quickly realizes that not everyone on this circus team are good people. Some are just flat out rotten people. There is quite a bit of violence and some sexual references. I think the fact that it is based in the 1920's and 1930's is great. It really makes you think about things and how lucky we all are to have what we have. This was during the prohibition, which we all know meant no alcohol. So people would drink things like vanilla extract to get there jollies off! The people dress differently, a nickle goes about as far as $20 does today and people are just plain different. I mean, I know 2019 is a lot different from 1930 but when you actually read about this world with an excellent story attached, you find yourself connecting a bit to those old times.

Eventually Jacob finds himself head over heels for a young beautiful girl named Marlena, the one who rides on top of the elephant in the circus. OK, that's it! That's all I am giving you! I hope for my sake and anyone that has read the book that the movie is very close to it, but even if not it should be decent. And please please please. if you are a reader and you haven't read this, just go get it, its worth it! I read it in 5 days whenever my newborn slept.

Update - The movie was actually really good and quite close to the book. Well done!

A Clockwork Orange - Review (4.5/5 stars)

WOW! This book was incredible. Or should I say "real horror-show" lol (you wont get that unless you read the book) Anyway, I was a bit worried when I first bought this book. I ordered it from Amazon.com because it was a best seller and had a ton of great reviews. It was written in the 1960's so that also scared me a little since I heard it was hard to read. The second I opened the book I looked over at my wife and said "I don't know how long this is going to last". Not only was it seemingly hard to read but it has its own language called the "Nadsat" language or "teenage vocabulary of the future". So I decided to try about 10 pages and see if it starts to make sense. And thanks to the glossary I had to check almost every other word in the first couple chapters, it grew on me. Actually, I believe I can now speak fluent “Nadsat” haha. A few days later I finished and now I wish I took my time because I'm sad its over.

The book has some very disturbing parts to it but nonetheless, it was excellent. It is about a young 15-year-old boy named Alex. He hangs with his "droogs" which is more or less his gang. They go around the town causing trouble on a daily basis and they love it. After school, when they decide to go to school, they set off to the local "bar" and drink these milk drinks that are spiked with drugs and alcohol which get them all loaded. Then they go to houses of elderly or innocent people and steal from them while beating them to near death (in some cases death) then head on to the next plan of action. If that isn't disturbing enough, the droogs, in many cases, rape young girls and beat old men crossing the street for fun. This goes on and on and you may think that that would not be something interesting to read about, but the language and how it is narrated is so addicting. You even start to like the main character. Anyway, the young kids wind up fighting with each other over who is the leader and this results in a lot of tension between them. On a ordinary night for them they break in to a woman's house and this time they get caught. Well, Alex does anyway, while his friends run away and leave him for the police. I don't want to give everything away, so I am leaving a lot out but this ends part 1 (3 parts in the book). Part 2 brings Alex to jail as a young kid and he becomes an experiment of the government to change criminals in to good people. The way they go about this is very hard to picture, but to make it short, they force him to observe very nasty, extremely disgusting things happening to innocent people during war and regular life, etc. etc. After months of this being forced on him, he kind of becomes a zombie type of person who gets nauseous anytime he even thinks of being evil.

Part 2 ends with him being set free back in to the real world. As you can probably guess, part 3 starts with him heading back home to return to normal life (about 3 years after he went to jail). He finds that things have changed, some of his old friends are gone, his parents have decided to move on from him and life isn't the same. He winds up running in to some people he had hurt in the past and this now makes him very sick feeling. He is involved in some fights that in the past he would have loved but now even the thought of doing bad makes him ill. This winds up taking a toll on him and he has a hard time adjusting to this life and thinks of taking his own. At this point he has some major choices to make and has a difficult time choosing which way to go. But I will leave that for you to figure out!

All in all I absolutely loved this book. The book came with about 250 pages of reviews and criticism from other authors. I have yet to read those but I will be starting that tonight. I didn't expect to care much about that part but the story was so amazing that I am now anxious to see what others thought and their interpretations. The narration from "Alex" is so original with his language he speaks and the thought process he goes through. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys a good story and a different outlook on whats important on a daily basis. There is a movie called A Clockwork Orange which I am very excited to see to compare but I have heard it is much different. We will see!

Update - I saw the movie and I really did not like it. The book is FAR better. The movie was too creepy and weird.