Kovacevic: Ten years to the day, I'm here to talk

I woke up Sunday morning -- no, Sunday afternoon -- and wanted no part of any of it. Whipped the sheets up over my head, rolled violently to face any other direction than the day itself, then conked right back out.

I've had it.

And here's betting that's hardly some original sentiment in these unsettling, unreal times, huh?

I'm not a complainer by nature. I've got a beautiful wife, two brilliant kids, my health, their health, and my mom recently stiff-armed coronavirus right out of her system. I'm born, raised and living in the only city I'd ever want to call home. I've got a job that ... wow, I pretty much molded from clay.

But I'm here to talk. If only to urge others to do likewise.

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What can feel insignificant to us ... sometimes it isn't. And sometimes it becomes confusing. And sometimes it crosses into something else entirely. And medical professionals who are infinitely smarter than me say that the best interruption to that process is the simple act of saying it out loud.

In that context, I'm fine now. But 10 years ago to this precise day, I wasn't.

I'd walked downstairs to the office in our previous home and, like pretty much every other day, I'd popped open the laptop to get to work. In sitting down, I tucked my left leg under me, lowered toward the chair and ... a pain unlike anything I'd experienced shot from my lower back down through my left leg. I collapsed to the floor. Then bounced back up, wishing it'd just go away. Then crawled up the steps to get help without ... well, screaming for it.

Long story short: A disk slid where it wasn't supposed to slide and banged up against a nerve.

Longer story shorter: I didn't handle it well.

Family aside, my life's always been about my work first and foremost. At the time, I was the Post-Gazette's beat writer covering the Pirates. Spring training was a couple weeks away. And even in the state I was suddenly stuck in, all I wanted was to fly to Florida to do my job.

I began doing exercises for the first time since my hockey days. At least whatever I could. Initially, making it up and down a single flight of steps was a day's achievement. Then, a walk around our neighborhood. Then, planks and calf dips.

It wasn't really clicking, though. The thing in my back felt no sturdier, no stronger. If there was progress, I wasn't feeling it.

Which is when something far worse entered the equation.

On these walks, I'd feel this strange tingling in my fingers and hands. Specifically anytime I'd think about the job. I'd shake the hands and keep going, try to change the subject in my head, maybe switch to another song in my headphones. 

No way that was real, I'd say to myself.

But it was. And it got very bad very quickly. And took over. Couldn't think. Couldn't sleep. Couldn't function. Couldn't stand to be seen by my own family, for fear of being embarrassed, of exhibiting weakness, of showing them that I was even more broken than what they'd already seen.

Even longer story even shorter: My personal doctor accurately diagnosed me as experiencing acute anxiety, and he assigned appropriate medication.

The battle didn't end there. It took half a year to achieve normalcy, with both the back and the brain. And a couple years later, when I stupidly thought I'd buried the brain issue and flat-out stopped taking the medication, I endured a six-month relapse that was every bit as deserved as it sounds.

Again, I'm fine now.

And I'm grateful to my doctor, the medical personnel and athletic trainers of the Pirates who helped me completely eliminate the back issue -- I even returned to play hockey for a single game and scored twice just to prove I could do that, too! -- as well as all the family, friends and, of course, the readers who stuck through some of the pauses that were forced upon me.

The reason I'm sharing this isn't to strike up the piano and violins. What I just described is next to nothing compared to what others endure when it comes to mental illnesses of all kinds. My year and change was just that.

No, the reason I'm sharing this is that I want you to understand, as I came to learn, that the brain is just another body part. And like any body part, it can do things you don't want it to do. It can go wrong.

And when it does, there's nothing intrinsically wrong with you.

You aren't weak.

You aren't a bummer.

You aren't spoiled or petulant or unappreciative of what you have.

You just have some chemicals that are misfiring, maybe for the moment, maybe in a bigger scope, and it's enough to lead to other haywire that only adds to the chaos at the heart of it, seemingly in an uncontrollable cycle. If anything, it's always felt fairer to me to label this scenario as a physical issue rather than a mental one, if only because there's an actual physical activity occurring and, besides, mental makes it sound like imagination, you know?

It's real. It's normal. It's common. And it always has been. The only difference now is that it's OK to talk about it. 

I didn't want to talk to anybody about it a decade ago, and I'm talking about it now.

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As I'm typing this for you, my left hand is doing a little of that tingling. I hate that, but I don't fear it.

Once more, I'm fine now. That's not bluster. That's not me playing tough-guy. It's just true.

The main reason I'm fine is that I engaged it. I didn't deny it or suppress it, at least not to myself. I eventually shared it with anyone who could've helped or, for that matter, benefited from it. Everything was out in the open, available for feedback and further information.

So yeah, I've had it. Meaning with this pandemic, the shutdown and all else.

I hurt when I'm covering these sad sporting events that have few fans or no fans at all:

I hurt when I worry about our company and our staff, as we still really can't do our jobs, much the same as I couldn't in 2011:

And I hurt so very badly for my city, for my Downtown, for all the shops and vendors and people I've come to know, more than I'm comfortable confessing to you:

And yet, none of it crosses over. It just doesn't. Not for more than a millisecond.

Because I'll talk about it. With the doctor. With my wife. With my kids, in encouraging them to share their own thoughts. With friends. With acquaintances who've known similar scenarios.

Heck, there are even occasions like this where I'll lay it on you.

We'll get there. All of us. I've been writing that since this started last March, and we're closer now than ever. Vaccines are out there. They're being distributed. They're being received with excellent results. And while the loss of life and health and money and so much more will linger for a terribly long time to come, there's a different feel to any trying challenge once there's a finish line attached.

I still worry. But after I come to crawl out of that bed, I'll brew up a triple-shot espresso, and I won't hear criticism for it because these are triple-shot times. And then I'll go about the day with a Pierre-Olivier Joseph/Chase Claypool/Ke'Bryan Hayes level of hope for the future.

If you need to talk, do so. Here are local contacts for Allegheny Health Network, which treated me, and UPMC, and there are many others.